501 

5?^ 





Copyright Ni 



Cjopmrigrt deposit. 



liTe 

Keystone 

of 
Industries 



ILLUSTRATED 



By 
SIDNEY YOUNG SULLIVAN 



19 16 
CALL PRESS 

New York 



Copyrighted 19 IG, 

by 

SIJ)NEY YOUNG SULLIVAN 



All rights reserved 



OCT 14 1916 

i)CI.A445125 
7 I 







W'liat Is a Farm \Mthoiit a Cow? Something to Love That 
Can't Talk Back. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Preface 9 

CHAPTER I 
Back to the I>and 11 

CHAPTER II 

The Value of Practical Farming and Good Common Sense 16 

CHAPTER III 
The Soil 25 

CHAPTER IV 

Office Orders, the Kind Sometimes Given to Superintendents 31 

CHAPTER V 
Failures and Tiieir Causes 42 

CHAPTER VI 
Help 52 

CHAPTER VII 
Figuring ^^'^ 

CHAPTER VIII 
Hay ■ 70 

CHAPTER IX 
Horses 70 

CHAPTER X 
Poultry 103 

CHAPTER XI 

Intensive Farming on a Small iVcreage 108 

CHAPTER XII 
What Constitutes a Working Manager 117 



Whoever within doth look 
Will benefit by this book. 
Get knowledge, laugh and enjoy 
The writings of a country boy. 

Grasses green, blue sky and trees, 
Singing birds and humming bees. 
Dark clouds, then rain, then bright and clear. 
The writer regrets that he cannot hear. 

To them that I within describe. 
In their hearts they know I haven't lied; 
You laugh at what others may see, 
But always think it is not me. 



THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 



PEEFACE 

Theke was a farmer who got plumb discour- 
aged; it seemed as if whenever he got a good 
crop prices were so low that it didn't pay to 
haul the stuff to market and when prices were 
high he had no crop. Things got so bad he 
said he'd be hanged if he was going to work any 
more. He figured he would starve anyhow and 
there was no use working himself to death at 
the same time. When spring came he didn't 
plant anything at all but let the weeds have 
full sway. Everybody predicted that he would 
be in the poor house inside of six months, but 
that didn't worry him in the least because he 
knew he was headed that way any how. There 
was talk of electing him to some office in order 
to provide for his family, but his political views 
were all wrong and it couldn't be done. About 
four months later, when this man had a fine 
crop of rag weeds and wild radish, along came 
an auto with four good lively young fellows 
and stopped for water for their machine; the 
farmer asked them if they wanted a drink of 
cider, for there were a few wild, twisted old 
trees that nature kept for him. After cracking 
a few jokes the men asked him how much he 
would take for his farm; just for a joke he said 
he would take seven hundred dollars an acre; 



10 



THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 



much to his surprise they took him up paying 
him cash for the whole hundred acres. Now 
there is the best golf links in the country and 
the farmer is living in town lending money to 
his farmer neighbors at exorbitant rates of in- 
terest. Some people are born lucky, others 
have to work; for the benefit of the workers 
read the rest. I expect to be criticised but will 
stajid back of anything I write ; now sit up and 
take notice of the observation and experiences 
of a man who knows. Straight from the shoul- 
der. 




Practical Farm Garden, Dairy, Poultry, 

Lecturer and Labor Expert. 



THE KEYSTONE OP INDUSTRIES 11 
CHAPTER I 

Back to the Land 

The back to tlie land movement boomed by 
land promoters and little stories of farm fiction 
has ruined many ambitious young couples and 
business men, Having but a few thousand dol- 
lars to invest, they purchase a farm, pay cash, 
say $1,000, balance mortgage. These people be- 
ing misled by printed stories of successes but 
not of the failures. The average city man has 
an idea that life on the farm is a vision of fresh 
eggs, milk and bumper crops, and a big bank bal- 
ance and enough of outdoor exercise to make it 
healthful. No thought is given to the toil, sound 
judgment, broad-mindedness, years of experi- 
ence and work to make the farm pay. Further- 
more you have to love it, and be able to get 
around difficult corners with the least amount 
of expense. Failure should not discourage you 
but make you cautious before sinking your last 
dollar in something beyond your skill. There 
is money in it two ways; what you put in and 
what you take out. A great many put it in and 
never get it out, then lose their farm, and every- 
thing they have, never figuring that the land 
companies and experiment stations have the 
backing of the state and corporations. Their 
exhibits look nice at the fairs and get you en- 
thusiastic, but they do not teach the real farmer 



12 THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 

anything; lie knows lie can do the same thing 
on the scrub oak lands, or any lands, if he has 
the money to put the soil in condition to grow 
crops. What he looks for is not an exhibit but 
the real bona fide profits obtained from the land 
per acre after all actual expenses have been 
deducted. Many a city lamb has been led to 
slaughter and lost all he had by the lure of 
books, magazines and newspaper articles. 

PuRCHASIISrG OP A FaRM 

The purchasing of a farm depends entirely 
on what you intend it for; don't think you can 
buy a farm for views or hills and dales, if you 
intend to have it maintain itself; such places 
are luxuries, but on some of these farms angora 
goats, sheep, possibly swine can be raised, but 
such stock are not generally wanted on an es- 
tate of this kind where you have to raise large 
herds. In buying a farm for profit the first 
thing to find out is what you intend raising; 
find where you can market same to the most 
profit ; go to the general store and ask questions 
in ;regard to farm, relative to who owned it and 
who has been working it for the past fifteen 
years; what they raised; if they were success- 
ful. You can get this information in general 
conversation, but don't state your business. 
Keep in mind there is no trouble raising the 
crops, the trouble lies in being able to market 



THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 13 

same profitably. When you get off the train 
you look around and you will see a general 
store, gin mill, blacksmith shop, bus, a church 
steeple in the distance and a school house 
upon a knoll, which looks like a smoke house, 
and anything but a cheerful place for the edu- 
cation of children, but nevertheless you have 
landed in one of the great little producing 
sections; don't judge the town by the sta- 
tion. The store jji'opi'i^tor no doubt will tell 
you that Bill Jones lived there the past few 
years — had trouble or hard luck and had to 
give up; Bill was a good fellow but lost the 
farm after some city fellow had it for about two 
years and sunk a lot of money. You ask him 
who bad it before the city man — why he bought 
it from Si Simpkins, and Si was some farmer; 
raised fourteen children, sent them- to college 
and is living in town on his money. Wky you 
ought to know Si's sons, they are big lawyers 
and doctors and Si's daughter is teaching 
school in the big city. What did Si raise ! Why 
hay, milk, hogs, sheep, etc. — sold them right in 
the nearby market. Now if you want to be a 
success, buy that farm and raise the same 
product that raised Si Simpkins' fourteen chil- 
dren and educated, them. With modern ma- 
chinery and good judgment you can make money 
on that place. 

The best farm in the world ten miles from 
a station is not worth anything at any price, 



14 THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 



fO III 



fo ^^ 




THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 15 

unless there is a market for your product for 
that farm. Some farmers by the packing of 
their product create a demand for their brands, 
but it takes years of experience and time, and 
the auto truck will no doubt make some of these 
inland farms valuable, providing they are good 
for trucking purposes. Even at this it is a 
gamble; on a large farm you bury your fertil- 
izer and seeds ; they grow fine and you get good 
crops and yet you lose money. Now the ques- 
tion — why? Because your neighbors have 
equally as good crops and nothing under the 
sun can control the market prices, and your 
season's work is lost because of over-produc- 
tion. Last if not least, to be a success make the 
best three farmers in your neighborhood your 
friends — avoid experiments and let the other 
fellow do that. 



16 THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 

CHAPTER II • 

The Value of Pkactical Fakming and Good 
Common Sense 

Fakms have been bought, some for summer 
homes, others for certain hobbies and commer- 
cial farming. In purcliasing these farms they 
hope to have them self sustaining; others look 
for a fortune; others for pleasure. Now the 
question is, who is the one to run these farms'? 
Is the purchaser capable"? We all know that 
a man may be an excellent and prosperous 
banker, broker, lawyer or a merchant, but 
nevertheless may be unable to run his own farm 
with any success. He thinks he can — and no one 
is able to convince him different. It is always 
the fault of the superintendent or manager that 
things do not move right. I sometimes agree 
with the employer in this respect, but looking 
into the matter rightfully, the fault is the fact 
that the employer has employed the wrong kind 
of man. In nine cases out of ten, business men 
will employ some scientific man or engineer wlio 
has no practical ability or knowledge at all of 
farm work and its management; and it is a 
mystery how some of the managers and super- 
intendents who obtain these positions from men 
of real business ability put it over them. I have 
known them to employ men who could not quali- 
fy under a real farmer. You can tell nothing 



THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 17 

by references; only of character and honesty. 
I have the ability from actual farm experience 
to tell what a man knows by just allowing him 
to talk. 

' In engaging a superintendent or a manager, 
the average employer gets a figurehead at a 
large salary who is obliged to employ different 
men for each department, and they really do 
not know how these departments should be run 
properly. The average farmer being a man of 
coarse appearance, this man will show in his 
conversation and prove his ability to be a man- 
ager of an estate or a farm and prove to be a 
clear headed fellow and one who knows his busi- 
ness. Does he generally get the position! The 
answer is no, or not until the business man has 
employed the figurehead on his w^onderful ref- 
erences and spent a small fortune for experi- 
mental purposes which are charged against the 
farm; this is supposed to be overcome by the 
next superintendent. Generally this scientific 
superintendent will start on page one of an 
implement catalogue and purchase an article 
listed on each page before figuring whether it 
is really needed on your particular place. 

Now the question arises — what am I going to 
produce on my place? The answer is ^^every- 
thing, to make it a paying proposition.'^ Some 
hobby cattle, chickens, swine, hamper system or 
something read in some magazine which it has 
taken years to develop and has been adaptable 



18 THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 

for that particular farm. These things you ex- 
pect your superintendent to do in one year 
whether adaptable or not. It cannot be done. 
A farm or estate manager does not have to be a 
college man to make an estate or farm maintain 
itself. My experience with some of the agri- 
cultural graduates who have not had practical 
experience, is that they are expensive luxuries 
and can sink more dollars in a short space of 
time than by playing the races where you have 
a chance to win. 

I have yet to see the expert scientific farm 
that is paying $50 per acre over and above all 
expenses. This $50 per acre will cause com- 
ment and I have heard people laugh and say — 
why anybody can make $50 per acre, but remem- 
ber the man who is depositing $2,500 per year 
for a season's work on a fifty acre farm, is mak- 
ing money ; most business men sink that sum but 
the real farmer is not. It is being done to-day 
by practical farmers on Long Island, New York 
and other states but not on scrub oak land 
boomed by agricultural experiment stations and 
land promotors to sell land. The largest per- 
centage of products to-day in our markets are 
produced by the practical farmer. 

We will take for example a man who has been 
brought up on a farm, with cattle, hogs, and is 
well acquainted with general farming ; this man 
has to earn a living from same. He may not 
know a balanced ration, yet he will be making 



THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 19 

money ; getting everything out of Ms stock. He 
has got to get it, and he can do it for you. If 
you have doubts about this just deed your farm 
over to some good practical farmer, equip him 
and you will see him riding in his OAvn auto in 
about two years. The question arises— why 
can't he do this for his employer? The answer 
is — the farm has been run by everybody except 
him. He obeys orders, and the farm is run by 
the owner, all of his business friends, books, 
magazines and possibly some New York agricul- 
turist or farm efficiency experts, who have never 
run a farm in their lives. Take it from me, 
when engaging a farm expert go to him, and 
say what you want done and get his price. 
Then ask him to give you the names of three 
farms or estates he has put on a paying basis. 
After investigating and locating such places 
emjjloy the expert. It seems to me the largest 
business men, who should know better, fall for 
this farm efficiency business. There is no agri- 
cultural expert to-day who can go to a place 
raid spend a day, or a few hours, and plan or 
write you a set of plans to make your farm 
pay. It is necessary to first become acquainted. 
Conditions have first to be learned. There are 
estates and farms run to-day by managers un- 
der the supervision of owners and specialists 
that are running behind and still keep running 
behind. Now who is at fault"? I claim that the 
average practical farm manager and superin- 



20 THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 

tendent can run these places on a paying basis 
if let alone and the place is put entirely up to 
them, co-working financially with employer. 
Outside interferences only cause failures and 
losses and grievances and little is gained but 
extra expense. A farm cannot be run from a 
New York office and cannot be run like a fac- 
tory. Nothing scientific known can control 
weather elements. You may pipe and irrigate 
a small garden farm, but in large acreages and 
general stock farms it generally does not pay. 
If you take a trip in most any farming section, 
you will find the business man's farmer is 
going to show his old neighbor how to farm. 
In my section I have kno^^^l farmers to make 
good sales to these men for good figures, safely 
figuring on buying the same back for half price, 
for generally the business man farmer gets 
tired of sinking money in their places unless 
they are bought for summer homes or show 
places. I have often heard and read remarks 
about the old-fashioned farmer ; may I ask who 
developed this country and made more money 
than the old-fashioned farmer — even in the 
New England and other states on farms that 
are abandoned to-day? There are men in this 
generation living on the labors of their fore- 
fathers who made their money on these farms. 
These farmers made their money without mod- 
ern machinery. What could those old fellows 
do if they were living to-day? Now give the 
good, broad-minded, practical man a chance and 



THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 21 

employ him, for what he knows, and not what 
his previous employer had to say about him, as 
long as his character is all right. He might 
have been an absolute failure, and why — per- 
haps because he did not have the chance to 
show his ability, but his employer knocks him 
because he has obeyed orders and carried the 
place on his employer's orders; and the employ- 
er is still a farmer, still keeps changing man- 
agers, losing money, never realizing that the 
fault rests with himself. The reason is you 
are not a farmer; wake up, and use your busi- 
ness judgment and common sense. 

Has the Business Man a Chance! 

In purchasing a farm for a home or estate, it 




Swine Prisoners in Stone 500 Feet From th^ Feeding Point. They are 

Saying, "If I Could Only Get Out." City Bred Architects are Pigish. 

Their Mode of Construction is to See How Much Money They 

Can Spend. No Profit in Swine bv This Method. 



22 THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTKIES 

is generally conceded that the business man 
gets a place that is down and out, or not in high 
state of cultivation. This of course he does 
not mind, as his ideas are to improve the place 
with ideal buildings to suit his fancy, pleasure 
and temperament. While it i-s an easy matter 
to employ an architect to plan or remodel the 
mansions, when it comes to the out-buildings 
for horses, cattle, swine and poultry, the aver- 
age city bred architect puts the out-buildings 
in the most absurd places, and the mode of con- 
struction is to see how much money can be spent. 
How should the city bred architect know these 
things? He has never bred stock and does 
not know their characteristics, and does not 
know how to plan to decrease the cost of the 
maintenance or the natural condition of animals. 
You go into the finest stables and see valuable 
horses eating hay out of the air from racks high 
above their heads and other fancy triflings 
which leads the stable away from a sanitary 
standpoint. "We all admire these things, but 
did you ever stop to realize the amount of dust 
and dirt horses are obliged to inhale and con- 
sume and cannot help themselves? Nature 
meant for horses to eat from the ground. Next 
thing is the heaves, which is blamed on the hay 
or superintendent, and which should be charged 
to the mode of construction. Here is where a 
practical stockman would save you dollars. 

We next go to the dairy barns and find them 
built in the most elaborate manner; individual 



THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 23 

drinking fountains, cement mangers, salt hold- 
ers, brass railings, everything to make the cost 
of production beyond question. The buildings 
are not generally arranged on the efficiency 
plan; one building to lighten the work of tlie 
others. I have seen siloes placed 150 feet from 
the feeding point and heard owners say — 
^^What will you have to drink, champagne or 
milk — it costs the same." Here is where a 
good practical cattle man will save you dollars 
by looking over your plans and condensing into 
a model dairy with all sanitary methods and cut 
the cost of maintenance. Have you ever stopped 
to consider cows who are obliged to drink con- 
taminated water standing in individual foun- 
tain, also licking salt brick and rock salt lying 
in mangers? Salt absorbs moisture and filth. 
You try to keep the bacteria test at the lowest 
point, but are feeding it to the cow. For pro- 
duction of sanitary milk the plainer the con- 
struction of the dairy the easier the sanitation. 
We next go to the swine houses and find 
heavy bred swine standing on cement floors. 
Did you ever realize that Nature never meant 
for pigs to stand on stone f This one little 
thing has caused unseen sickness among swine. 
The question may arise — how I have seen sows 
standing with sore feet and where there are 
sores there must be mucus from them. The 
sow is obliged to nose around in the straw in- 
haling her own impurities. Next thing is the 



24 THJ] KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 

cholera or some other disease and the loss of tlTe 
herd. The owner asks where did it come from"? 
It must be the superintendent 's fault. Get back 
to Nature, using common sense and practical 
theories. Swine are the cleanest stock if given 
a chance to be clean, but are generally kept in 
their own filth. Here is where a practical stock 
man comes in again. I approve of good two 
and one-half inch hemlock flooring, cork, brick 
or block w^ood paving. 

Now to the poultry house; generally an out- 
put of at least from $5,000 to $10,000 for brood- 
er houses, incubator cellars and buildings, all 
gone before you have a chick. You buy stock 
and expect to get the interest on the investment 
from the poor little hen, because you have read 
of the wonderful results from chickens in the 
poultry papers. You must stop to consider 
that these articles are written for the benefit of 
their advertisers and to get your money; for 
without advertising the papers cannot exist. 
Poultry houses can be built neat, plain and sani- 
tary; no glass is required; the average height 
of the back should not be over four and one-half 
feet; the idea is to keep away from a wind 
break; on the four or four and one-half feet 
basis in the back, seven feet in the front, the 
wind strikes the roof and goes right along. 
Here is where one little practical theory will 
get you eggs, and there are many others. 



THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTKIES 25 
CHAPTER III 

The Soil 

All owners and farmers want to build up their 
soils for the least amount of expense. They get 
books on soils, farm papers and read up on 
the soil matter, and strike a snag: There is 
not a book that applies to any one particular 
farm. You read magazine articles about analy- 
sis of soils, and you call a specialist and he gives 
you an analysis of your soil. It lacks humus or 
nitrogen and it always goes back to the same 
answer; you need stable manure to get your 
land quick ; your practical farmer told you that 
you needed no specialist; now the specialist 
will tell you the chemical your land contains, 
and by adding the necessary chemicals lacking 
that will produce your crops. We say the land 
has nitrogen and phosphoric acid; all you have 
to do is to add potash, which you apply. The 
crop comes up and grows like a sick child fed 
on the wrong kind of milk. • Now where does 
the fault lie? You have done your part, it must 
be the superintendent not following the special- 
ist 's orders. Now it is not the fault of the 
specialist or the superintendent. Your land 
contained nitrogen and phosphoric acid and 
analyzed same, but it was not available or 
soluble to plant life; you fed the ground but 
not the plant; you can analyze nitrogen from 



26 THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 

shoe leather and potash from wood, but it will 
not grow anything unless in available form. 
To grow your crop it is necessary to have or- 
ganic matter, potash and nitrogen and phos- 
phoric acid, applied in available form. Then 
you will grow crops, providing you are blessed 
with the necessary rains or irrigation. A plant 
is a living thing, like a child, and has to have 
food and water, otherwise it will be stunted and 
starved. To learn these things you have got 
to read articles from the farmers^ standpoint, 
and there are very few papers that publish 
articles written by the farmers that are down 
to the earth. These articles are farm fiction 
that jolly the estate owners along for the bene- 
fit of their advertisers. When reading these 
articles just stop and think. 

Pkactical Natural Resources vs. Theoretical 
Methods 

To build from Nature's resources you read 
articles from scientists about plowing under 
cover crops, such as rye, clover or vetch. The 
scientist leaves the impression that you can 
produce the same as from stable manure; it is 
a mistaken idea to expect the same results from 
two bushels of rye sown to the acre at the cost 
of $2.00 as from twenty tons of manure at 
$1.80 per ton, or $36.00 per acre. I am coming 
to the natural resources you have at most places 



THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 27 

right at your back door. Generally every farm 
has a woods; if you cannot afford manure, go 
into the woods and take six inches of the virgin 
soil, which is composed of decayed leaves, 
worms and branches, and broadcast on your 
land and add one ton of lime to sweeten the top 
dressing, which will bring out all chemical avail- 
able to plant life. Plow in and you have your 
humus. You will have to add potash, phos- 
phoric acid and nitrogen. This mixture will 
grow anything. There are concerns selling this 
dried muck and organic matter to owners of 
estates. The owners having the same in their 
woods should be spreading their level land all 
winter and cultivating the woods at the same 
time. Trees like cultivation even in the woods. 
Do not make a mistake and think that lime is a 
fertilizer, as lime itself will grow nothing. The 
only resources that lime contains is the power 
to sweeten the soil and it proves valuable only 
where the land contains humus or organic vege- 
tation which has become sour and dead by mak- 
ing them available to plant life. If you have 
no woods, it will take longer to build up 
your place, from Nature's resources, by the 
following methods : Plant rye in the fall ac- 
cording to the climate of your locality; when 
eighteen inches high, the following spring, plow 
under, using a chain, extending from the end 
of the plow evener to the beam over the mould 
board, dragging in the furrow to lay down your 



28 THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 

• 

rye. Harrow, replant, with a mixture of oats 

and peas; when twelve inches high plow in, 
using the same method. Harrow and replant 
with soy beans. When beans blossom, plow in, 
using the same method. Harrow and replant 
with Hungarian millet or cow horn turnips; 
when the millet comes to a head or the turnips 
cover the ground, plow in. It will take one sea- 
son's work and you will have a liiimus bed of de- 
cayed organic vegetation. This can be sown 
in wheat and timothy hay, clover, added on top 
in the spring; after harvesting the wheat, you 
will mow hay for five years by adding a top 
dressing of ground bone, or, in fact, plant any- 
thing the following spring by rotation method, 
using commercial fertilizer. 



Fertilizee 

There are firms who make commercial fer- 
tilizers — do not be prejudiced against them as 
they employ chemists to study out available 
formulas for plant life. These fertilizers con- 
tain tankage as a filler, which makes the com- 
position a balanced plant ration and necessary 
to plant life. It is a mistake to broadcast raw 
chemicals on the land not containing humus, for 
in time it wall rack the land and act like whiskey 
fed to a baby, paralyze it. Remember: Na- 
ture always provides her own resources for 



THE KEYSTONE OP INDUSTRIES 29 

maintenance, but cannot apply it herself; it is 
up to the man. 

Humus and Soil Fertility 

Humus is decayed vegetable matter in the soil 
and is a very important constituent in rendering 
soils fertile. There are a number of reasons 
for this, prominent among which are the follow- 
ing: First, the organic matter containing the 
essential plant food elements, and as it decays 
these elements are changed into forms available 
to plants. In other words, the plant food is put 
in condition to be used again. Second, as the 
organic matter decays certain acids are pro- 
duced and these, acting upon the insoluble min- 
eral constituents in the soil, dissolve and render 
them available to plants. Third, many of the 
changes in the soil are brought about by bac- 
terial action, and decaying organic matter fur- 
nishes food for the bacteria, so they can grow 
and multiply and thus render more mineral 
plant food elements soluble in the soil water. 

Plants cannot take up solid foods from the 
soil; before they can appropriate food it must 
first be gotten in solution like sugar goes into 
solution when put into water. 

Then there are other ways in which humus 
benefits the soil. It renders the soil dark in 
color, and a dark soil absorbs more heat than 
a light-colored one; that is of considerable ad- 



30 THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 

vantage in the early spring. A soil filled with 
organic matter is also capable of holding more 
moisture than one that is deficient in this con- 
stituent. In a dry year this may mean the 
difference between a fair crop and a complete 
failure. Now this humus does not necessarily 
have to be stable manure for you can decay or 
make this humus without it passing through 
an animal by plowing under green crops, but 
this organic matter will lack nitrogen, which is 
obtained in manure through the urine, but scien- 
tists tell us this can be taken from the air 
through clover, but my own experience in ob- 
taining it through this form was :I plowed under 
5 acres of the prettiest clover in blossom; this 
was so sweet that you could lay right down in 
it and the fragrance would put you to sleep. My 
grandmother walked down on the farm and 
asked me what on earth I was doing. I said 
plowing under nitrogen. She said, better get 
your mowing machine and put your nitrogen 
in the barn. By better experience I found she 
was right. I would have gained more nitrogen 
feeding this nice clover to my cows and buying 
my nitrogen in a bag and apply it myself, and 
know it was there, and you don't get a starved 
out crop. 



THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 31 
CHAPTER IV 

OFFICE ORDERS, THE KIND SOME- 
TIMES GIVEN TO SUPERINTENDENTS 

// Your Man Does Not Know These Things He 

is no Man to Employ 

Fakm Memokanda 

This is the 11th of October; we must expect 
a hard freeze in about two weeks and have 
about six weeks before the ground will freeze 
up and make further work impossible in many 
lines. There are a number of things that I 
want to have finished before that time and the 
only way I know of to insure their being done 
is to make a list of them and then a schedule of 
the way they are to be done. The list will 
probably omit many essential matters; these 
must not be left undone for that reason but you 
should supplement the list wherever necessary. 

I have not attempted to make the list in the 
order of importance of the things to be done or 
in the order in which the things should be done, 
but only in the way they have occurred to me. 

1. Phmghing, harrowing, etc. This should 
be started after the first rain and a man kept 
constantly at it until the ground freezes. I 
would like to have every field south of the house 
ploughed and harrowed ; that is, all four fields. 
I would like, before it is planted, to extend the 
field furthest from the house by taking out some 



32 THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 

of the locusts, but I do not tliink that this can 
be done this fall. If necessary, the field that 
had corn and potatoes in this year may be left 
to the last, but those in heavy sod, like the 
timothy field No. 1, should be started at once. 

2. The lawn should be ploughed up. After 
this has been ploughed, muck from the ponds 
should be hauled and put on it. This muck 
should be put half an inch thick all over and in 
those spots where the soil is poorest about two 
or two and a half inches thick. As the muck is 
acid, we should add about 3,000 pounds of lime. 
This muck and lime should be thoroughly har- 
rowed in. 

3. Mulch the rhododendrons. You can use 
leaves and the wire which this year was used 
to train peas on, for this purpose. Before 
mulching, the rhododendrons should be thor- 
oughly weeded. 

4. Prepare root cellar. 

5. A considerable amount of w^ork in the 
garden. In detail she will direct this but in 
general it will be to grub out and spade in back 
of the present garden, take out locust tree in 
south end and the flowers now in border re- 
arranged as she may direct. 

6. Finish the work begun on the knoll. 

7. Cultivate the white pines on the hill back 
of the laundry yard. 

8. Protect the cedars. 

9. Get in the corn. 



THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 33 

To get this all done and yet keep up with the 
other work on the place will necessitate careful 
planning. I offer the following as suggestions 
only and will be glad to have your ideas on 
any and all of it. 

One man should be kept on farm work and 
nothing else. Cutting corn should first of all 
be finished and then just as fast as it is in 
condition, the corn should be carried in. Put 
the corn stalks in the old barn and the corn in 
the crib. This may necessitate putting some 
of the tools now on the floor of the barn under- 
neath, but if the same are well greased no 
damage will result. The work of this man is 
all important and he should have assistance on 
the corn so that there will be no question that 
he can start in ploughing immediately after the 
first rain. 

You and the other man had better first of 
all complete some sort of a root cellar. This 
you should be able to do in three or four days 
at the longest. You should then devote your 
own principal energies to transplanting such 
of the flowers as are to be moved and putting 
the vegetable garden in shape for the winter; 
i.e., tying down the raspberry bushes, setting 
out strawberry runners, banking the celery and 
the like. The other man you can keep working 
about the garden where he will be immediately 
under you ; perhaps you will be able to start him 
grubbing out the kuoU, 



34 THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 

As I told you, we allow the place $225 a 
month and all expenses have to come out of 
this amount. Your pay roll for the month will 
probably be about $165; you may save $10 on 
this but you cannot count on it. That leaves 
$45 for feed bills and all other expenses such 
as the purchase of a corn cutting machine, etc. 
Besides some time, between now and next 
spring, you must get enough ahead to pay for 
seeds and fertilizer for the gardens, both vege- 
table and flower. You will see that you will 
have to exercise the greatest care to get 
through. I think that if you calculate it all out 
carefully you will find that it will pay; in case 
you find after the first rain that your corn is not 
all in, hire another man so that the ploughing 
will not be delayed. 

Other Suggestions 

How much hay and straw can you sell? Bear 
in mind that you do not have to depend on the 
hay entirely for feeding for you can use at 
least half the ration of corn stalks. Y^ou can 
also use these for bedding instead of straw. 
It would seem to me that there should be a con- 
siderable amount of straw and hay to be sold. 

In this connection I might suggest what seems 
to me to be a good ration to feed the milking 
cows; 



THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 



35 



ONE COW 
15 lbs. of corn stover 
15 lbs. timothy hay 
3 lbs. corn meal 
3 lbs. wheat bran 

5 lbs. of a mixture of two parts gluten meal and one part 
wheat. 

All of tlie above entails a great deal of work 
and nnless you have a regular schedule, care- 
fully laid out in advance, it will be very hard 
to get through. The way for you to do will be 
to take one evening each week and lay out the 
work for each of you three for the next week. 
Every day should be scheduled. For instance : 



Time 


John 


Billy 


Mike 


6 A. M. 


Milk. Feed 


Clean stables. 


Help with 




chickens and 


kennels and 


chores until 




other stock. 


chicken house. 


horses are 






Put cows in 


fed; then 






pasture. 


plough. 


8—12 A. M. 


Get vegetables, 


Grubbing and 


Same as above 




water flowers 


other work 






in house, cold 


with you. 






frames etc.; 








start pump 








i f necessary. 








Work in gar- 








den. 






12—1 P. M. 


Dinner. Spe- 


Work with 


Same as above 




cial work like 


you. 






root cellar. 








mulching trees, 








etc. 






4:50— 5 P.M. 


Get cows and 


Evening chores 


Put up tools 




milk ; feed ani- 




and horses, 




mals. 







36 THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 

I am afraid that if you hire dagoes from the 
padrone you will only get eight hours a day out 
of them because they have to come and go so 
far. They really regard the time going and 
coming a part of the day's work; all this de- 
pends on the kind of a man you can get, how- 
ever. I call this magazine dope that makes 
good men leave their positions. 

Can a manager who receives these orders 
and follows them make good? The writer says 
no, but he carries out the orders with no heart 
in his work, for he knows he is doing wrong. 
He speaks to his employer, and the employer 
immediately says to him: ^^This is my place, 
and I am running it ; if you cannot follow orders 
get out." The orders are followed; things go 
backward instead of forward and the owner 
gets dissatisfied with his manager and dismisses 
him. Does he give this man a reference? 
Some do and others say, call them up. When 
called up, his last employer will state that he 
is an incompetent man; cannot handle, help; 
was a good worker but Avas impertinent because 
he talked back trying to show him light on a 
farm subject which the employer had not 
enough skill to see. What you are doing is 
keeping a competent man out of employment — 
a man that know^ more farming and managing 
than his previous employer will ever know. 
Have you a right to judge this man's ability, 



THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 37 

he being an absolute failure following your or- 
ders, making the work twice as hard for him, 
as he was working against the grain? Have 
you- ever asked him what he knows about the 
brokerage business, if you are a broker? He 
will immediately answer you, ^^I am a farmer 
and that is out of my line.'^ In this class of 
help it differs from commercial classes; you 
should apply broad-mindedness; do not con- 
sider the length of time a man has Avorked for 
his last employer, if he has a good character 
reference. Some employers send their secre- 
taries to look at the last place the man has 
worked; if it looks fine there must be some 
reason he left to get another position; possibly 
to better himself; if the place looks poor he 
cannot be any good, but this does not signify 
anything, for you know not what conditions 
that man had to work under; he hasn't had the 
tools or help when needed, or anything that he 
really required — the time was past and the 
place got the best of him; he could not catch 
up. He is a failure to his employer and a fail- 
ure to the eyes of the next door neighbor and 
the community, and has difficulty in obtaining 
another position through no fault of his own. 
The writer has employed men that were failures 
on neighboring farms, but a neighboring farmer 
will never knock a man for the work he has 
done for him, but will always say to try him out. 
I have personally tried out these men, some of 



38 THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 

them drinking men, and they proved to be tfie 
best men I have ever employed, and I can say 
some of them quit drinking because they were 
treated for once as men, and the systematic 
management of the place fascinated them. Be- 
ware of the man with a pocket full of references 
of high sounding reading, as generally you will 
get misled; also a long reference, as generally 
they have worked on places where they have 
had soft berths and not the hard knocks of the 
game; in fact, references amount to nothing; 
it is the man. 

What Constitutes a Good Supeeintendent 

A man that knows what to do and when to do 
it; a man that can keep the respect of his men 
and keep good fellowship ; a man that can over- 
come obstacles with the least amount of ex- 
pense ; a man that knows his place ; a man that 
does not know it all; a man that is not over- 
bearing; last, if not least, a man with diplo- 
macy ; one that* can manage a place for his em- 
ployer the way his employer wants it run, at 
the same time not allowing his employer to think 
that he is running the place; this man is a 
winner. Employers like to think they are run- 
ning their farms whether they are or not ; they 
pay the bills. 

If you expect your superintendent to make 
good he must control his help; on all successful 



THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 39 

places the superintendents employ and pay all 
their help; they know the kind of men wanted 
and where they have to use them ; if they do not 
employ their men they cannot expect to get 
the good out of them. The first thing the help 
will throw at the superintendent if he is em- 
ployed by the employer or secretary is, *^Who 
is hiring me? — what have you got to say about 
it ? Go to hell ! ' ' And the superintendent can- 
not discharge him or pay him off until he is re- 
ported to the owner or secretary. The best 
superintendent fails under these circumstances 
and is forever branded as a failure and kept 
out of another position through nothing but the 
narrow-mindedness and ignorance of his em- 
ployer. 

Red Tape and Farming Don't Go 

One thing that will not wait is planting time ; 
to raise successful crops you have to be master 
of your farm; just let your farm master you 
once and you are gone; fertilizers, seeds and 
all things ordered by your superintendent, 
working foreman or farmer should not be 
held up for at least two weeks by your sec- 
retary or yourself. If you have not confi- 
dence in your superintendent to act as your 
agent you should not employ the man. Crops 
for success must be planted on time, so that they 
can have their proper chance in starting and 



40 THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 

make way for succeeding crops. Once you get 
behind you can never catch up ; do not blame it 
on your superintendent, but see that he has the 
material on time when he wants to use it. 
Farming is not like a factory ; you cannot work 
nights to rush orders. Successful farmers cart 
their material when the ground is hard and 
have everything on the place before the ground 
opens up; put everything right straight up to 
your superintendent and he will do the rest. 

Now to the superintendent or manager who 
has the confidence of their employers. There 
is one thing meaner than a skunk under the 
barn, and that is a grafting superintendent or 
manager. It may be irritable to work under 
orders of your employer's secretary, but your 
very employer may have been bit by a snake in 
the grass. There is nothing worse than the be- 
trayal of confidences. Then again, the man- 
ager or secretary who has not the ability to buy 
their equipment direct from the manufacturer 
at the lowest price and buy through an agency, 
is losing money for his employer. While the 
writer handles equipment, it has been his ob- 
ject to reduce expense and buy just what is 
adaptable for the places. There are secretaries 
buying articles through agencies and often get- 
ting feed and grain that cannot be used, but 
the superintendent or workmen do not dare to 
report to their employer for fear of losing their 
jobs. 



THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 41 

The best way to detect a grafting employee 
is to ask the men how much board they are 
paying, the wages they are getting, and order 
something from an implement house and re- 
turn the implements and have the credit bill 
sent to you. The writer has no sympathy with 
a grafter. 



42 



THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 



CHAPTER V 

Failures and Their Causes 

Why doesn't the farm maintain itself? A 
question trying to be thought out by a great 
many men. Generally I have answered that 
the overhead expenses and money invested 
in your particular place far exceeds what 
it can ever produce, regardless of what you 
raise. Your anxiety to make it pay causes you 
to keep changing managers and jumping from 
one thing to another, never actually planning 
a season's work as farmers do, regardless of 




Unthinking Friends Always Ready to Eat Your Hard Earned Grub. 



THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 43 

what tlieir friends say or do. You listen to 
too many people and do not give a manager a 
fair chance. The having of many friends often 
bankrupts young starters with moderate means. 
It costs money and time to entertain; breaking 
in a day's work to hack to the station, and many 
a farmer starting has been put to the wall by 
unthinking friends. If your friends come use 
them; you cannot be a success and entertain at 
the same time. Your kind and unthinking 
friends will walk around your place and pat you 
on the back and say everything is fine, swing 
in the hammock all day in the shade, but are 
always ready at meal times to fill in on your 
good hard earned meals, going away delighted 
and tell some more of your friends of their 




ARRIVAL. 
Boarder — "I am looking for a man by the name of Sprague." 
Farmer — "I be tnat party. Heave yourself in."' 



44 THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 




DECIDING. 
Boarder — "How is the board at your place ?'' 
Farmer — "I am known to be the best grubber in these here 

diggins. Don't I look it?" 
Boarder — "Yes, but other things don't." 




Getting Your Trunk Back to the Station. 
"$2.00, please." 

delightful time. Next week more friends, and 
so on, until you are keeping a free boarding 
house and you working your heart out. If you 
are going to keep these friends, better be a 



THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 45 

boarding house farmer— the kind that raises a 
small garden, keeps a few hens, a cow, takes 
boarders in the summer months, has a thin horse 
and a rattling depot wagon; is big, jolly and fat. 
Their principal work is taking out parties on 
straw rides, fishing trips and charging $1.00 to 
take your trunk to the house and $2.00 to get it 
back to the depot ; they have good natured, lean, 
worn out wives, whose main struggle is to save 
enough money to exist in the winter months 
and have one dress a year. Who is running this 
farm? Why, the wife. Another successful 
farmer. Now I say the wife is running that 
farm, but did you ever stop to think that the 
farmer 's wife is the pivot of his success ? With- 
out house management a farmer cannot suc- 
ceed; just let him have a wife whose interests 
are not with him and he fails. I have heard 
remarks about the independent farmers, but 
for that independence some one has to suffer 
and generally it is the wife. This has been so 
since the developing of the country — to prove 
this you can go into any country cemetery and 
you will find on almost every headstone where 
this one and that one had buried two or three 
wives, and some old farmers are living with the 
fourth, and you can invariably trace it to the 
farmer. I haven't the least doubt that these 
wives simply worked themselves to death with 
hard work and rearing of large families. Times 
have changed now, but nevertheless the work 



46 THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 




You Can Walk and Drive Around a Nice Building and Starve to Death. 
They Bring You in no Income. Get Your Soil Right, the Build- 
ings Will Follow. Could This Man Live if He Sunk All 
His Money in Buildings? No! 




THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 47 

in a farm house is beyond conception and 
the farmer's wife should have every work sav- 
ing device as her husband has for outside work, 
but he generally gets his first; the board and 
feeding of a lot of farm help is no snap ; I have 
often heard owners say — we pay $5.00 per week, 
you should make money at that, but every dol- 
lar a farmer's wife makes is taken out of her- 
self. I have heard lectures at granges by 
women on house management, but if those lec- 
turers had to do the real work of some of the 
farmer's wives, there would be less talk. 
House management is one grand thing — it 
should Avork with regulation with the outside 
work on set time. The small duties of the farm- 
er 's wife is getting up in the morning 5 A.M., 
getting breakfast, washing dishes, feeding 
chickens, getting children to school, making 
beds, sweeping ; then sitting down to about one- 
half bushel of second size potatoes, then getting 
dinner, have dinner, then mend clothes, skim 
cream, make butter, get supper ready; eat; 
wash dishes; put children to bed. Nine P.M. 
— then if she is able, may possibly sit down and 
try to read some farm or story paper until her 
head drops; then retires with a life partner who 
has worked in the sweltering sun and oftimes 
forgets to take a bath ; this goes on day in and 
day out and without an ambitious, interested 



48 THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 

woman who is a good manager, farming could 
not exist. 

Other causes are the lack of using fertilizer 
to grow the crops; the average business man 
wants something for nothing. Do not expect to 
get it from the air; it costs money, for every 
$50 put in, you should take $100 from an acre, 
or average same within four years, for if you 
do not put it in do not expect to get it out. 
Gare should be taken in selecting seed; do not 
go to a seed house and expect to get catalogue 
results; go to the most successful farmer in 
your locality, see where he buys his seeds; if 
he has good corn seed get your seed there; re- 
member acclimated seeds always give best re- 
sults. By all means do not try varieties of seeds 
requiring rich soils on poor land ; do not plunge 
in farm machinery ; find out what you need and 
buy accordingly; as soon as you stop the leaks 
you are a success. Do not spend too much 
money in buildings; while they look nice, re- 
member, they will bring you in no income; fix 
up the old buildings, do the best you can and put 
in every available dollar in your soil and you 
will find if you get your soil right the buildings 
will follow. You can walk around your nice 
buildings and starve to death, if you haven't 
enough money to maintain yourself ; do not buy 
stock too expensive to kill or sell at reasonable 
figures, for in a short time you will find your 
farm over-stocked, or you will find your stock 



THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 49 

eating you out of a home. Now because your 
stock comes from some great sire or dam with 
pedigrees, do not think customers will fall over 
themselves buying stock from you at big fig- 
ures; it takes years of experience to build up 
a trade in any one breed. 

Do not expect to get acreage results from 
experimental reports, as generally the experi- 
ment is done in small plots with water con- 
venient; in all acreages you have to depend 
upon the rains and have blights, worms and 
unseen obstacles to prevent you from getting 
those yields. If you keep your ground thrifty 




THREE ACRES OF POTATOES. 

The man who wouldn't allow his manager to pay fair wages. 

This man is a failure to himself, his employer and the 

neighborhood through no fault of his own. 

Does it pay? 



50 



THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 



and well cultivated you will have no trouble in 
having a good yield, but not the kind that is 
read in experimental reports. Eain is neces- 
sary, but too much rain is a hindrance. AVhen 
you have your crops started and it rains for a 
solid week you will find the weeds far ahead of 
your cultivation. That is the time you want 
help; the more the better; clean up your crop 
as soon as possible, but do not work it in the 
mud. Once the weed gets the better and the 
crop is stunted, nothing known in science can 




The Farm Tliat Paid $10.00 per Day per Man for 16 Days. It Paid! Pota- 
toes, Cucumbers and Sweet Corn. Not Scientific, but Just Good 
Common Sense Farming. If You Don't Get the Weeds, the 
Weeds Get You. 



THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 51 

make it recover. You either have to get the 
weeds or the weeds get you. If the word 
science is ever misplaced, it is in farming, but 
the word progressiveness should be used, as all 
farming has progressed with every other in- 
dustry. 

There was once a farmer who had a dream 
— a fairy came to him and said if he cleaned 
his cows better he would make $5,000 per year 
on his stock. The next morning he looked at 
his stock and thought of his dream. ^'I don't 
believe I could do it, it only means more work 
for me to get my stock cleaned better.'' He 
didn't do it. This man has mortgaged his 
farm. That is the beginning ; you can guess his 
end. Moral: LAZY. 



52 THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 
CHAPTER VI 

Help 

This is the hardest thing on the farm and the 
most expensive; every dollar has to be taken 
out of the soil and a cheap man is not worth 




What the Writer Is Doing for Agriculture. Transforming City Boys Into 

Farmers From the Ground Up Method. These Young Men Have 

Made Good. Will You Give One a Chance? 



THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 53 

his Mre; it makes it still harder because the 
average class of young men taking agricultural 
courses will never make farmers in their nat- 
ural lives. You can take a trip to any county 
or farming section — can you find one out of 
every twenty-five successful farmers a college 
graduate or a scientific farmer? If these 
young men had about two years' good hard, 
practical experience under a good farmer and 
can stand the hard knocks they are good, but 
they invariably quit the game. In my eighteen 
years of experience I have seen about twelve 
make good and I have interviewed them by the 
hundreds, but do not dare take the chances of 
placing them for they do not make good. They 
all want to be superintendents, but couldn't 
superintend a row of beans in their grand- 
mother's back yard. This is why the foreign 
element make the most successful farmers in 
existence to-day. The average American-born 
young man doesn't like hard work. 

When you get a good man, appreciate him; 
he is human and a hard worker, and when em- 
ploying a farmer, either manager or farm hand, 
by the month, do not think you own him; you 
cannot make a servant out of a good farmer. 
Do not expect to get a good farm or estate 
manager for $60 per month and wife to board 
help, do laundry work, make butter, etc., for 
any good man does not have to have his wife 
work. The investment on your place may be 



54 THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 

$100,000 or less— can you expect a man to run 
a place representing a large sum for a salary 
of that kind? What would you pay your sec- 
retary representing the same investment? We 
will say $5,000 per year. You can get ^ve hun- 
dren secretaries to every one good farm man- 
ager ; you cannot buy brains at that figure and 
it takes brains. Do not expect brains for la- 
borers' wages. Also you shouldn't turn down 
a man with a family, for all good men have fam- 
ilies. It is Grod's blessing. Comfort makes 
contentment, and your farmer or farm hand 
needs comforts, but is generally put in bar- 
racks, over cow stables, in out-houses, in fact 
any place is good enough for the farmer or 
farm hand. These men work all day and must 
be fed according to their work — good hearty, 
solid food, three times a day on time. You can- 
not keep them fed on cereals, lettuce, salads 
and soups, but plain bread and butter and po- 
tatoes, meat and stews — it doesn't have to be 
the highest priced meats either. If a man is 
not properly fed you cannot expect him to work, 
and the meals must be on time. From 5:30 
or 6 :00 A.M. ; 12 M., and 6 :30 P.M. After that 
a man's time should be his own, but when a 
man is treated right you will find him with you 
at any hour night or day, but if not treated right 
he will leave you without notice, as he knows 
his ability, and a good man can get a position 
at any time and be treated as a man. 



THE KEYSTONE OP INDUSTRIES 55 

If you cannot keep your help there must be 
a reason. Just sit down and think it over. It 
is a mistaken idea to think a working man can 
live and work on the same food as the mistress 
or be portioned out just so much of this and 
that with the idea — ''why that^s enough for 
any man.'' Also men Avill not wait for their 
meals on Sunday morning. You expect them 
to get up and do their chores and they wait 
around until 9 o'clock for their breakfast and 
this being late, you decide to have two meals on 
Sunday. You positively cannot keep help this 
way, and the idea of filling a man up on salt 
pork, corn beef, ham, mackerel and oatmeal 
until he gets so much salt in his mouth that 
when he takes a drink of water he imagines he 
is diving in the ocean, is wrong. You kick if 
your man gets pickled, but you pickle your man. 
Oatmeal will not last a working man two hours, 
but will fill him up temporarily. Good solid 
food must be fed; without it your man will get 
famished and leave you. Some egg a man to 
death; nothing but eggs until the man's stom- 
ach is so upset that he dare not look a hen in 
the face. 

I have had employers come to me for men 
and want a man for practically nothing, stat- 
ing they have a fine out-house or room over a 
hot kitchen, in the barn or hennery. In fact, 
their idea seems to be that the man is the same 
as an animal; he couldn't possibly have a nice 



56 THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 

• 
clean room in the house, but the dog can sleep in 

the library. Then people cannot imagine why 
they cannot keep help and why it is scarce. 
Some of the farmers are suffering now, owing to 
their treatment of farm^help in the past, when 
they could go to Castle Garden and get green 
foreigners, practically the scum of the earth, 
take them home, put them anywhere and treat 
them like animals. The times have changed and 
each branch of farming is specialized such as 
Farmers, Teamsters, Milkers, Dairymen, Gar- 
deners, Herdsmen, etc. But the farmer, a com- 
bination man, is invaluable, and can command 
his value. The board causes more changing 
than any one thing; a man will not stay if he 
is not fed right for his work. 

Do not turn down an inexperienced man, for 
he makes the best help if he wants to work. It 
may take yourself or foreman a little time to 
break him in, but Avhen shown he makes no mis- 
takes and does his work your way and will 
generally make good for you. The man who 
knows how to do everything has worked for 
Tom, Dick and Harry and carries all kinds of 
references with him; this man you often get 
cheated in because he knows their ways and 
slips over his work carelessly. Do not turn a 
man down for what his last employer may say 
about him, if he is of good character. He may 
make the best man you ever had, but just could 
not get along with his last employer and his last 



THE KEYSTONE OP INDUSTRIES 57 

employer thinks up his faults and knocks him 
for his own grievance at losing a good man. 
The average business man who employs this 
kind of help is narrow-minded and often loses 
a good man. A farmer cares nothing for ref- 
erence — it's what a man does for him; if he 
cannot do it he gets fired quick. College boys 




The Inexperienced City Boy Transformed. Do Xot Turn Down 
an Inexperienced Man. 



58 



THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 



are generally expensive help, for when they 
come to your place full of theories and find you 
are not equipped with the latest machinery they 
simply cannot w^ork, as at college they had 
everything to work with. A successful farmer 
is the man who stops the leaks without spending 
money. They have often come to me and said, 




The Inexperienced City Boy Learning Farming From 
the Ground Up. 



THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 59 

'^I cannot work for that farmer — ^he has noth- 
ing to work with, ' ' but if this young man sticks 
it out he will find that that shrewd farmer has 
a fat bank account, and they will learn more 
real farming in six months and how to over- 
come difficulties than they ever learned at col- 
lege and be a success, but they don't stick. If 
a man should start an office or school to teach 
agriculture and take the money from the same 
class of young men which I have met they would 
be arrested for swindling. Take the average 
farm boy who takes these courses; it either 
spoils him completely or makes him. After 
graduation one of these boys came home; his 
father asked him what he learned. He said he 
could play ball, tennis, foot-ball and fence. The 
father was glad that he learned something, so 
he said he could come and help him dig post- 
holes and fence in the ten acre lot behind the 
house, but the boy said, ' ' Oh, no, father, I fence 
with foils.'' His father said, ^^You do, eh; you 
come with me and I will teach you how to fence 
with a crow bar and spade. ' ' 

This was a spoiled boy, and you generally 
find them working in the general store or some 
city position, as their course in college has 
made them beyond the farm. I don't blame 
these boys and do not see why their fathers 
send them to college to learn a profession only 
to work for wages or manage their own farm, 
working in the sun, mingling with laborers all 



60 THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 

• 

their lives, having nothing but hard work star- 
ing them in the face. If a boy is to be sent to 
college for training better train him in a pro- 
fession which he can follow and be dressed like 
a gentleman at the same time. Now these young 
men get their diplomas but what part of a dol- 
lar do they represent but to work for wages? 
They may possibly take a position paying $50 
per month and board, but the outlook is that 
more have to work for $30, as in the agricul- 
tural field you cannot go out and hang up your 
shingle, as do our professors, doctors, lawyers, 
architects, engineers, etc., and become promi- 
nent leading business men of the world. The 
animal husbandry course has produced some 
good feeders of cattle who get good money, but 
they have to be thorough cattlemen and like 
their work. Their future is nothing but follow- 
ing up the cow tail, and a hard life making- 
records for some millionaire or superintendent 
who gets the credits of the records and the 
feeder is never mentioned. 

To start farming it takes capital and stock 
to the amount of at least $1,000, and this has 
got to be handled properly or go under. How 
many professional farmers do you hear of 
retiring, such as there is in our professions, 
unless they get government appointments or 
lecture on the subject, making money on the 
outside? These men are doing wonderful 
things on paper, but what are they doing for 



THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 



61 



the down to the earth farmer? Ask a farmer. 
It's a hard thing for any young man to take 
a course and graduate and then start out in a 
field that doesn't pay the salaries or ineoines 
worthy of a profession. Now, is it a profes- 
sion? My personal experience and eighteen 
years of observation lead me to believe that 
farming is a gift — it has got to be in the man, 
and if it is in the man he will make money. The 
idea of there not being money in farming is 




Hilling the Ground for All Its ^^'ortll. If You Think the Good Farmer Is Not 

Making Money You are Mistaken. Potatoes, Sweet Corn and 

Cucumbers on the Same Ground. 



62 THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 

wrong, for without farming this world could 
not exist. You think the good farmers are 
working for love; you are mistaken. If there 
was any possibility of a farmer figuring on 
market conditions he could make a fortune in 
short order. If you like to see a business man 
make a fool of himself, just sell him a farm. 

As to orphan asylum boys, I consider it cru- 
elty to children to farm out these small boys, 
as most farmers exj)ect them to do a man's 
Avork; get them up in the morning early, keep 
them busy until school time; hurry them to 
school at the last minute and they are often- 
times late ; come home and are put to work after 
school; all for board and clothes, people never 
realizing that they are children. If you take 
a boy give him an interest in a dog, calf or gar- 
den spot that belongs to him and everything 
to make it his own, and encourage him in every 
way, to make the farm interesting to him. 
When his calves mature pay him so much a 
quart for his milk, but he should take care of 
his own stock. Do this and the boys will stay 
home and take pride in their work, for they 
have an object. You can lead a horse to water, 
but you cannot make him drink. 

Now if these young boys grow up, or in fact, 
for any young man, what better opportunity 
is there in life than to work on a farm? Wliat 
business could a young mail start at where he 
could save more money, be healthy and get a 



THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 63 

start in life than on a farm if he is ambitious, 
honest and saving? We will take for an in- 
stance a young man started at $30.00 per month 
and board. This is $360.00 net. He spends 
$9.00 per month for clothes, shoes and pleas- 
ure, or $108.00 per year. This leaves him 
$252.00 per year, or $1,008.00 in four years. 
What position in the city could any man take 
and have the same amount in four years at 
$15.00 per week! This is why the foreigners 
are so advanced to-day. They will come to 
work for you as a farm hand, and the first 
thing you know they own a farm, earned by 
thrift. A good example for the American boy. 
It is a mistake to look upon a farm hand as a 
degenerate, for these very degenerates become 
the chief factors of the keystone of industries. 



64 THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 
CHAPTER VII 

FiGUKING 

A GKEAT many articles have been written on 
this subject, some by professors and others by 
men who actually maintain themselves on what 
they have raised, but any one can sit down and 
plan and figure out the profits they can make 
on a farm, on paper: what it costs to prepare, 
fertilize, and reap, and figure on the market 
value. But if you put those figures on a shin- 
gle, when it comes to harvest your crops, you 
will find the figures are washed away, because 
you cannot figure on the market for any per- 
ishable product, or the weather elements; only 
irrigation or intensive farming can overcome 
these, for you have got to have water, but the 
market figures cannot be overcome. Farm sta- 
tistics really amount to nothing ; they are based 
on experiments entirely different from what 
you meet in everyday farming. 

Planning 

Make three sets of plans — clear, cloudy and 
rainy day. Do no rainy day work when it is not 
raining, if there is inside work to do ; do no 
wet land work when the land is dry, if there 
is dry land work to be done. Never cultivate 
wet land ; for wet days it is better to clean your 



THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 65 

harness, fix your tools, and you will generally 
find inside work staring you in the face, as a 
farm hand does not like to get wet. Remem- 
ber they have only one or two changes of 
clothes and are not allowed to go into the 
kitchen and sit by the fire and keep warm. 
Work which cannot be done when the ground 
is frozen should take the place of work that 
can be done in the winter time. In rush sea- 
sons put nothing off for to-morrow that can be 
done to-day, but do nothing to-day that can be 
put off until to-morrow. Prepare a deep and 
thoroughly pulverized seed bed, well drained; 
break up in the fall if possible and cross plow 
in the spring to the depth of eight to twelve 
inches according to the soil, with instruments 
that do not bring up too much subsoil to the 
surface. I have seen a great many articles 
about subsoiling, but have never seen a good 
row of any one plant sown in a dead furrow 
that was not properly filled in; but for drain- 
age the breaking of a hard pan subsoil has been 
beneficial to crops in places where water lodges. 
Use seeds of the very best variety, intelligently 
selected and carefully stored; do not let the 
seed catalogue reports excite your imagina- 
tion. In cultivated crops give the roAvs and tlie 
plants in the rows a space suited to the plant, 
the soil and climate. Use thorough tillage dur- 
ing the growing period of the crop. Secure 
high contents of humus in tlie soil by the use 



66 THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 

of legumes, barnyard manure, farm refuse and 
commercial fertilizer; carry out a systematic 
crop rotation with tlie winter cover crop if pos- 
sible ; accomplish more work in a day by using 
more horse power and better implements; in- 
crease the farm stock to the extent of utilizing 
all waste product and idle lands of the farm. 
Most farms carry more stock than they can 
feed. Produce all the food required for the 
men and animals on the farm if possible; keep 
an account of each farm product, in order to 
know from which the gain or loss arises, and 
by all means take stock of everything on your 
place once a year; put it down in your stock 
book, its cost and the place it is kept, from a 
curry comb to your harvester. If your man 
takes a wrench, hoe or seeder, charge them to 
him if he does not bring them back and put 
them in their places; have a place for every- 
thing and everything in its place ; it is just the 
same as money. Do not buy machinery to 
stand out under a tree — better to hire the ma- 
chine from your neighbor or hire the work 
done. There are too many farms with dollars 
lying all over the place for the elements to rust 
and wear, and when you go to use a machine 
in a critical time it breaks down and it takes a 
long time to get your castings from the fac- 
tory and you lose half your crop. 

Don't be like the farmer who, when his man 
asked him where his mowing machine was, 



THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 



67 



scratched Ms head and said: ^'Let me see; 
where I finished up last year." Or the man 




Don't Buy ]\Iacliinery and Let It Lie Ljider a Tree. 

who decided to cart his manure every day, 
backed his wagon up to the manure pile, but 



68 THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 
when lie wanted to use the wa^on again could 



not find 
manure. 



it, as it had been 



covered 



up 



with 




A Place for Everythiii<i: and Everytliing in Its Place. Ifs Just the Same 
as Money. Small Expense Shed, 25x30. 

Now do not let the tractor bee buzz in your 
bonnet. While tractors are wonderful good 
things for some farms, you must first figure if 
it will be adaptable to yours. For vast acre- 
ages they are good, but on small field farms 
with rolling hills they are valueless, as it takes 
a great while to plow out corners and some- 
times gets ■ stalled in mellow ground. Remem- 
ber you are not going to get a $30.00 farm hand 
to run your tractor. He must be a thorough 
man who will keep all oil bearings clean. In 
my own travels I have generally found tractors 



THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 69 

standing' rusting under slieds for tlie want of 
some one to run them, or on account of not be- 
ing adaptable to the place, having been pur- 
chased on the impulse of the advertising. If 
you must have one, buy the kind you can back 
up into the corners. Just because a man uses 
a tractor and modern machinery it does not 
make him a scientific farmer any more than the 
grocer who delivers his groceries with an auto- 
mobile. He is progressive. 



70 THE KEYSTONE OP INDUSTRIES 

CHAPTER VIII 
Hay 

Timothy hay should be cut when in blossom. 
Better to start a little previous than have it 
over-ripe and woody; it is just something to 
fill up a horse, but loses its value in feed. 
When timothy and clover are sown together 
the clover should be cut in bud or full blos- 
som; do not do as many farmers do, wait until 
they see the timothy heads come through their 
clover, for you will have rusty clover hay and 
lose half of the leaves, and this hay will give 
heaves to any horse. I approve of mowing 
clover in the late afternoon; mow what you can 
get in the next afternoon; the overnight wilt 
preserves the juices in your clover before the 
sun does the drying out process. Keep your 
tedder working in the forenoon ; take up a hand- 
ful of clover, wring it; if there is not much 
moisture when wrung tight get it in, as it will 
dry in the handling; salt it down with coarse 
salt about a quart to the load, broadcast over 
the mow; if stored this way the blossoms will 
never lose their fragrant smell and can be fed 
to anything. 

The Weight of Hay. — In estimating the 
weight of hay, allow 540 cubic feet for a ton, 
if on the wagon or newly stored, but if well 



THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTKIES 71 

settled in mow or stack, allow 512 cubic feet. 
Two hundred and seventy cubic feet of baled 
hay will weigh a ton. Some say 400 cubic feet 
of hay will weigh a ton. 

Alfalfa 

In sowing alfalfa you must have manure and 
inoculation on some soils. Prepare the ground 
and spread with manure about September the 
first; broadcast one ton of lime to the acre; 
sow in rye and clover. About* May the 15th 
next spring, plow this under and roll the 
ground; every two or three weeks harrow 
with a disc harrow at each w^eed germination 
until July 25th, ready to be so^vn on August 
the first; it is best to inoculate your seed with 
a chemical inoculation which you can get from 
various firms ; use as directed. I have had very 
good success in the growing of alfalfa. The 
best way to mix the chemical is in a galvanized 
tub; then spread on a sheet to dry; when dry 
put it in small bags and strike the bag against 
anything flat which will separate the seed 
which has a tendency to stick together after in- 
oculation. This seed must be kept in the dark 
after inoculation. Sow with a sixteen foot bar- 
row seeder, the only seeder that I have ever 
found to sow accurately. You will find the 
clover and the rye will help inoculation; it can 
be grown most any place if properly handled. 



72 THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 

Harvest your alfalfa wlien you see new slio©ts 
brandling out from the bottom whether in blos- 
som or not; by this method you can get pos- 
sibly four cuttings a year. Follow the same 
method as curing clover, but if the weather is 
cloudy better put in stacks and cap in the field 
until it sweats out. Alfalfa will not grow on 
any ground where water will lodge ; drain your 
alfalfa field. 

COEN 

Corn should be planted from May the 5th to 
June the 10th, according to climate; should be 
kept absolutely clean ; if it cannot be kept clean 



J' 




A Sullivan Crew Ready for Work. Farmers From the (iroiiiid Up. 
a Bank Account. "Go to it, boys!" 



Each One Has 



THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 73 

in rows better to plant in Iiills, so it will enable 
you to sow a cover crop between the rows of 
the last cultivation. A great many people 
leave corn until it is past ripe, but the proper 
time to cut your corn is when the grain sets 
starchy or has a slight glaze. Just take your 
finger nail and press it in the grain ; if the milk 
comes out it is not ready. A good farmer can 
tell by the looks of the stalk and silk. By all 
means try and have it husked and cribbed by 
Thanksgiving. 

To Measure Corn in the Crib. — Find the 
length, breadth and depth of the body of corn, 
in feet, and multiply these three dimensions 
together; then multiply the product by .63. 
This will give the heaped bushels of ears. 
Sometimes one and one-half bushels of ears are 
allowed for a bushel of shelled corn, and some- 
times two bushels ; the amount dep(^nding upon 
tlie sliape of the ear, the size of tlie cob, etc. 

QUANTITY OF SEED TO PLANT TER ACRE 
FOR VARIOUS CROPS. 

Alfalfa 20 to 25 lbs. 

Barley 1 1^ to 2 bu. 

Beans — 

( 1 ) Bush Beans 1 to 1 ^ bu. 

(2) Pole Beans ^ bu. 

( 3 ) Velvet Beans 1 to 1 ^ pks. 

(4) Soy Beans (Drilled) ^ bu. 

Bermuda Grass Seed 5 to 6 lbs. 

Blue Grass 10 to 15 lbs. 

Buckwheat y^ bu. 

Cantaloupes 2 to 3 lbs. 

Carrots 3 lbs. 



74 THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 

Clover — • 

(1) Bur Clover (Clean) 10 to 12 lbs. 

(2) Bur Clover (in bur) 50 to 60 lbs. 

( 3 ) Crimson Clover 20 lbs. 

(4) Red Clover 12 to 15 lbs. 

(5) White Clover 3 to 4 lbs. 

Chufas 1 to 11/2 bu. 

Cowpeas 1 to 1^ bu. 

Corn 1 to 2 gal. 

Broom Corn 1 to 1^ bu. 

Cucumber 2 lbs. 

Essex Bape 6 to 8 lbs. 

Garden Beets 8 lbs. 

German Millet 25 lbs. 

Hairy Vetch with oats, rye or wheat 25 to 30 lbs. 

Herds Grass 8 to 12 lbs. 

Jerusalem Artichokes 6 bu. 

Kale or Borecole 3 lbs. 

Kaffir Corn or Sorghum (drill) 12 to 15 lbs. 

Kaffir Corn or Sorghum (broadcast) 40 to 50 lbs. 

Lespedeza or Japan Clover 20 lbs. 

Lettuce 2 to 3 lbs. 

Millet 1 to 11/2 bu. 

Mustard 2 lbs. 

Mangel and Sugar Beets 10 to 12 lbs. 

Oats 2 to 3 bu. 

Onions 4 to 5 lbs. 

Onion Sets 8 to 10 bu. 

Okra 8 to 10 lbs. 

Orchard 15 to 25 lbs. 

Parsnips 5 to 7 lbs. 

Parsley 3 lbs. 

Pearl or Cat-tail Millet 8 to 10 lbs. 

Peanuts ( in shell) 2 to 2i/^ bu. 

Peas, Garden or English 2 bu. 

Potatoes 8 to 10 bu. 

Pumpkins 3 lbs. 

Radish 10 to 12 lbs. 

Rice 1 bu. 

Rye 1^ bu. 

Sunflower 4 to 5 qts. 



THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 75 

Spinach 8 to 10 lbs. 

Summer or Bush Squash 2 to 3 lbs. 

Sweet and Roasting Ear Corn 6 qts. 

Teosinte 2 to 3 lbs. 

Turnip 2 to 3 lbs. 

Timothy 10 to 15 lbs. 

Vetch, Winter or Hairy 40 to 50 lbs. 

Watermelon li/^ to 4 lbs. 

Wheat 2 bu. 

For Soicing in Beds to he Transplanted 

Cabbage 6 to 8 oz. 

Cauliflower 6 oz. 



76 THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 
CHAPTER IX 

Horses 



Horses for farming purposes must be good 
for three things — big enough to work, not too 
big to go on the road ; should be of clean legged 
type with small hoofs, weighing about fourteen 
to sixteen hundred; a good looker w^hen har- 
nessed to the surrey or in all harness ; one that 
can cultivate between narrow rows without 
damage to crops; that picks up his feet at the 
end. Such a horse in a year's time will save 




A Typical Farm Horse. You Cannot Hook Him Wrong. 



THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 77 

you dollars. By all means do not have a big, 
clumsy horse; he will do lots of damage and is 
a slow mover and you will lose time. Do not 
buy a truck horse for farming purposes — he 
IS not in his place. 

Cows 

There is nothing known in farming that will 
pay immediately on investment more than good 
cows; they pay returns at once, and with rea- 
sonable care, you can sell them for beef after 




The Farmer's Insurance. 



78 THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 

• 

their milking period is over, or for breeding 

purposes if well bred, heavy milking cows 
for at least one-half the purchase price. They 
may talk about disease in cows but the major- 
ity of cows are the healthiest animals in ex- 
istence and do not die off as frequently as 
horses. It may seem singular, but in the writ- 
er's past eighteen years' experience with cat- 
tle, he has never seen a cow die from natural 
causes. He has never read of any one instance 
where any disease has actually been proven 
that came from the cow, but diseases have been 
traced to the milk through the cow, which has 
been obliged to drink stagnant or contaminated 
water or fed and handled by a man with infec- 
tious disease, but the germs have no effect on 
the cow itself — it should be charged to the han- 
dling of the cattle. 

Bovine tuberculosis is one of the largest ob- 
stacles which confronts the dairy farmer of to- 
day and robs him of millions of dollars an- 
nually. It is a sad fact that there are but few 
farmers who can readily distinguish the ap- 
parent signs of tliis disease at the time of pur- 
chasing an animal unless such animal is in the 
last throes of the disease. 

While we haven't an infallible method of de- 
termining whether the animal is infected or 
not, the tuberculine test will, in most cases, tell 
us before any outward signs have developed, 
but the most practical way of determining at 



THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 79 

time of purchase is by giving each animal a 
thorough physical examination, which will cause 
one to reject animals which he would otherwise 
have purchased. 

To physically examine cows the following 
parts should be carefully examined: The res- 
piratory system, the udder, the superficial 
lymph glands, the reproductive organs and the 
digestive system. 

At first the cow should be given a general 
examination, noting her general condition in 
relation to her age, care and amount of milk 
produced. Note condition of animal in walking 
or standing; see if the skin is loose and elastic 
as it should be. Feel the extremities such as 
horns, ears, limbs and teats. If they are cold 
the animal is not normal. Look for the bright, 
healthy eye and alert look, which is one of the 
best indications of health. 

The respiratory system is the seat of the 
most trouble, and the next thing to examine. 
See that there is not an increased frequency in 
breathing. A cow that breathes sixty times a 
minute when not excited or exercised is not 
breathing normally. Listen for rattling sounds 
in lungs and throat and see that discharge from 
the nose is not above normal. Pinching the 
upper part of the windpipe is one of the best 
tests for tuberculosis. If a low, moist cough 
can easily be induced it is a pretty sure sign of 
its presence. This should not be confused with 



80 THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 

the hacking cough of the healthy annual whfch 
sometimes follows the operation, especially 
with old cows. 

In the United States the laws on the milk 
question are the most strict, principally in the 
state of New York. If a cow has a cough, that 
does not signify that the cow has tuberculosis, 
for they oftentimes cough after drinking and 
eating of bulk food. 

The udder is the next part to examine. Re- 
gard any animal as suspicious that has un- 
natural swellings not due to injury, or one that 
has feverish quarters, or gives stringy milk 
(garget). 

Tuberculosis of the udder usually starts in 
the left hind quarter, so that quarter should be 
given the most attention. Kneed it and feel 
for nodular growths. 

The superficial lymph glands are frequently 
affected in an infected animal. Feel glands on 
each side that are under jaw in back of jaw. 
There are four groups, but are not easily found 
unless affected and swollen. 

The reproductive organs are the next to be 
examined as well as can be from outward ap- 
pearances. Presence of the disease is shown by 
flabby, swollen condition of the vulva, a slight 
greyish discliarge from the vagina, sinking of 
the broad ligaments. The lips of the vulva 
should be opened and color noted, which should 



THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 81 

not be inflamed, but a healthy pink and free 
from excess mucus. 

Tuberculosis of the digestive tract is quite 
rare, but when animals are so atfected, absence 
of appetite and diarrhoea when non-laxative 
foods are given. 

Tubercular animals are not necessarily a 
menace to the herd as long as they are not 
spreaders, but it is impossible to tell a spreader 
by her outward appearance. It is necessary to 
inject a sample of the sputum under the skin 
of a guinea pig and note its action. This pro- 
cedure cannot readily be done b;^ the average 
farmer, so it is advisable to make a* deal with 
Jake, the bologna man, while the dealing is 
good, or Jake may have the whole herd. 

While the farmer does not get enough for his 
milk from the dealer, he is generally using too 
much acreage for the milk he is producing, and 
the laws that control milk make it still more 
expensive to produce. AVhile some of the laws 
seem ridiculous, the conditions under which 
some milk is produced are such as to warrant 
the passing of such laws, but this does not 
necessarily mean an expensive equipment. The 
honest, naturally clean farmer these laws will 
not affect, but the farmer who delivers his milk 
to the platform and on his return home fills the 
cans up with garbage, skim milk or whey de- 
serves no mercy. This man's milk is rejected 
and he simply takes it to some cheese factory 



82 THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 

and sells it. This fellow should be put out of 
business. 

"While the laws governing milk are fair, the 
rules of medical societies go to extremes for 
the producing of certified milk. In some in- 
stances a man with a mustache cannot milk in 
a certified dairy. Why not shave off his eye- 
brows, eyelashes, hair on his arms, etc. ? Also, 
better look at his teeth and have them removed. 
God made hair grow on a man's face and never 
meant it to kill the man or anything. There 
would be more certified dairies but the good, 
broad-minded farmer cannot tolerate petti- 
coat inspections. It is worse than chowder 
without any clams. Now milk is produced in 
the country where there's sunlight, which is 
a destroyer of bacteria. Milk is one of the best 
bacteria growing mediums, therefore should be 
handled carefully after it leaves the farm. It 
comes to a city with dirty streets, sewers, gut- 
ters, manholes, excavations, garbage cans, ash 
cans, cuspidors, kitchen sinks and some dirty 
bath rooms. A nest of bacteria caps are taken 
off and the milk is let stand on kitchen tables, 
sometimes put in pails or cups ; in fact handled 
carelessly by the consumers. If any sickness 
occurs the milk is blamed the first thing. 

You can go in almost any bath room and 
find tooth brushes exposed to the odors, and 
if the hair on a man's lip is alive, how about the 
hair on the tooth brush that is swabbed around 



THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 



83 



your nice clean, sanitary mouth! But in some 
cases tlie brush is cleaner than the mouth. 
Also drinking glasses which stand there for 
everyone to use, and the only washing it ever 
gets is a rinse of water. Now, Mr. Germ Bug, 
put these things in your pipe and don't let your 
pipe go out. Why not help the farmer and 
have an inspection of toilets and bath rooms, 
especially in the congested districts, or in fact 
your own home, and help stamp out these un- 
seen little germs and diseases which are wiping 
out our children. Now, Health Officer, clean up 
a few things around home, and don't be too 




Hugging a Milk Maid. Who Said I Kill Babies 



84 THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 

ready to look for diseases when you send your 
sick patients to recover, where they can get 
some farmer's good miU^. The country Health 
Officer only sends his patients to the city, when 
necessary to a hospital, for recovery or to be 
butchered or killed. 

It is conceded in the keeping of cows that it 
is necessary to have large acreage, but the most 
successful dairy of ten head of cows can be kept 
on a twenty-acre place and fed practically all 
from feed raised on the place. Some grain will 
have to be bought to balance the ration to in- 
crease the milk production, but cows milking 
from forty to sixty pounds per day can be kept 
profitably on twenty acres. Dairymen are 
making money with grades, but real money is 
in the best of stock, but you will have to milk 
three times a day every eight hours; you can 
increase the milk production of any cow by fol- 
lowing the three times a day method. The 
writer knows of thirteen cows, milking eleven, 
forty-quart cans per day, or four hundred and 
forty quarts, and is ready to take any one and 
show him this stock. 

The system of keeping cows on twenty acres 
is to alternate your fields — five acres of clover 
or alfalfa; five acres of ensilage corn in hills 
or rows; one acre rye; tAVO acres of oats and 
peas ; two acres of fodder corn, cut and fed in 
the stable, green. When oats are all used, re- 
plant Hungarian millet and feed green. By al- 



THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 85 

ternating these fields tlirougiiout the summer 
you can get your supply of green food for your 
coAv. For winter feed plant three acres of 
mangel beet, thirty-two inches in rows ; one and 
one-half acres of carrots (long orange) planted 
in beds, fourteen inches apart and worked by 
hand ; add three ounces of purple top white tur- 
nip seed to every pound of carrot seed; this 
germinates in 48 hours and you can immediately 
work your carrots before the weeds germinate, 
as the turnips will row the carrots for you and 




You Lome to a Fanii Section and Everything Looks Prosperous, Look for Cows. 



86 THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 

you pull these for feed and feed after milkmg. 
Cows like these sweet turnips, and you do not 
have much carrot thinning to do. By purchas- 
ing some brewers grains and cottonseed meal 
for protein you can raise cheap milk. Do not 
let your cows out in day time, exercise tliem 
in the evening w^hen the flies sleep. 

By feeding all feeds in the stable, you are 
controlling the milk production of your herd; 
control the flies and you control bacteria. Ex- 
ercise in the evening on small farm; on large 
farms pasture at night. When you come to a 
farming section where everything looks pros- 
perous, look for cows, you will generally find 
them. 

If the milk producers could consolidate, the 
city milk dealer would pay him his price or go 
without milk; let the producer just stop the 
milk supply for two days in any one city and he 
will find the uproar it will cause. Why should 
the producer be dictated to? Put up a cheap, 
plain sanitary dairy, cutting out all frills; the 
least obstruction the easier the sanitation. I 
have seen plans in dairies where you have to 
walk miles to feed your cows; get plans from 
some good substantial cattle man who has 
worked among his cattle; do not be like the 
man who gave his milk to an asylum because it 
cost him 15 cents a quart to raise it. 

Keep your ^ve acres of ensilage clean; use 
flat cultivation in hills or rows ; you should have 



THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 87 

at least twenty ton to the acre of corn suitable 
to your climate conditions; harrow out corn 
stubble and sow in wheat or rye to be cut 
green in the spring. Sow clover in the spring- 
when the ground cracks, after mowing your 
rye or wheat for fodder; here you have 
your crop of clover for your winter feed. Your 
previous five acres being turned under in the 
fall for your next crop of corn; the cows will 
furnish you the necessary manure for your 
farm; use lime ten hundred pounds to the acre 
well harrowed in on all your lands. Rotate your 
land, first one side then the other; alternate 
your beet and carrot grounds yearly; first car- 
rots and then beets, as this ground must be 
kept free from weeds. Use one thousand 
pounds commercial fertilizer in a row for 
beets ; sow your fertilizer on top of your carrot 
rows, broadcast. It is necessary to use ferti- 
lizer to quicken the crop; it keeps the carrots 
and beets from getting rooty, which will happen 
in too rich, manured land. Store your beets in 
a good root cellar or pit, twisting off the tops, 
do not cut ; your carrots must be thro^^TL in the 
field in small heax)s and covered with tops; it 
is better for them to sweat out before storing; 
in pitting them dig a pit not more than eighteen 
inches wide, three to four feet in depth, right 
across your lot and cover with straw. After 
coneing it up put one foot of soil on top and 
leave a handful of straw sticking out of the 



88 THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 

top every fifteen feet for ventilation. To pre- 
pare root food for cattle it is necessary to wa^h 
them for large herds. 

I have found the barrel system the best in 
use. This can be worked either by hand or by 
gas power. A simple method easily done, but 
keep your water free from mud. All roots 
should be cut in small pieces or mulched in a 
root cutter. 

In some instances I have seen cut roots lodge 
in a cow's throat; the method I have used in 
such cases is by hose, putting it right down 
the cow's throat, with pressure, or striking the 
cow on the outside with a flat board to crush 
the obstruction ; anything to stop strangulation, 




The Man That Shouts Loudest That There Is No Money in Farming. This Is What 

He Calls Ensilage Corn. 



THE KEYSTONE OP INDUSTRIES 



89 



but a mouth gaggett should be kept in every 
stable. By the use of this it enables you to 
put your arm down the throat to take away 
the obstruction. 

Corn fodder cut up in small lengths is good 
feed, but better when shredded, if the crop is 
properly cured, free from mould. In storing 
shredded corn stalks in buildings it generally, 
in most instances, has a mouldy smell which is 
not liked by the cattle and really spoils the feed ; 
it is better to stack all stalks whether whole or 




By Gosli — 20 Tons to the Acre on 500 Pounds Commercial Fertilizer — 10 Tons to the 
Cow. Now, Boy, Will It Pay? 



90 THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 



o 
o 




THE KEYSTONE OP INDUSTRIES 91 

shredded out-doors. The proper way to store 
shredded stalks is to build a crib of trees from 
the woods, about eight inches at the bottom to 
twenty feet high— space off six feet apart as 
long as you want your stack ; width about twelve 
feet ; stay your up-rights, line this with any old 
boards you have, leaving one end open for 
your shredder to blow your stalks in ; pack and 
tread well right up to the end to the opening 
to the height required ; put on a top of standing 
stalks, ridging it up to the center, to the ex- 
treme out side ; take long poles and wire or rope 
together both ends, and put over the top, one 
running on one side and the other reverse ; this 
will stay the top through all weathers. 

Cows FOR Test Work 

In selecting a cow for test work she should 
be big, strong and powerful, well veined, the 
more wells the better ; should be started at least 
six weeks before calving and fed up to her ca- 
pacity, the feeder knowing just what she will 
consume before coming fresh; the cow being 
seasoned to her feed and they will have no ill 
effects. I have seen the best records made by 
this method of feeding ; when starting the test 
ten days after freshing you will have the cow 
up to the limit and do not have to feed her 
to it. One week before calving a cow should be 
fed laxative foods. Milking should be done 



92 THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 

four times a day, every six' hours on the sqJ; 
time; if you vary the time you will spoil your 
record; the temperature of the stable must be 
kept as even as possible. By all means do not 
let a noisy man or a man that will abuse your 
coAvs in your stable; keep her mild, gentle and 
contented and she will do the rest. 

I do not approve of paying a fancy price for 
a cow that has made big records, for she will 
generally fall down wdtli you on her second test 
and be good for'breeding purposes only on her 
past records, providing she has not been forced. 
Buy them for their confirmation; if you do not 
know a cow, employ some one that does, for you 
cannot buy a cow because she has a nice bead; 
always look over her business end and figure 
$5.00 per quart when fresh and you are buying 
safe; always look for a long veined cow. 

Balanced Rations 

There are all kinds of different methods of 
balanced rations; in my experience with cattle 
I have found no one balanced ration suitable 
for test work that is better than another; for 
test work it is the individual you have to feed. 
One cow will differ from another and has to be 
fed accordingly; their temperature should be 
taken twice a day, all water measured, food 
weighed ; cow weighed each week and kept free 
from excitement and milked by one man. For 



THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 93 

butter fat records the temperature must be kept 
up by stimulating food ; in some cases it is not 
the cow but the record regardless of how you 
get it. The following rations I have tried out 
with good results, as a general herd food, for 
cows weighing one thousand pounds, giving 
twenty to twenty-five pounds of milk daily, on 
two milkings, but an increase of flow could be 
added to any cow of this type by using the 
three day milking method, every eight hours 
and increase the profits on your herd. For 
every additional three pounds of milk add one 
pound of the grain mixture. 

NO. 1 
35 pounds Silage (medium ripe) 
10 pounds Mixed Hay 

2 pounds AAlieat Bran 

2 pounds Cornmeal 

2 pounds Cottonseed ^Nleal 

2 pounds Gluten Feed 
NO. 2 
35 pounds Silage (well ripened) 
12 pounds Mixed Hay 

2 pounds Wheat Bran 

2 pounds Cornmeal 

2 pounds Dried Brewers Grains 
1 pound Cottonseed Meal 

NO. 3 
40 pounds Corn Silage (Avell ripened) 
15 pounds Clover Hay 

3 pounds Cornmeal 

1 pound Cottonseed Meal 

NO. 4 
15 pounds Corn Stover 
12 pounds Mixed Hay 

2 pounds Wheat Bran 



94 THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 

2 pounds Dried Brewers Grains 
2 pounds Corn-and-Cob Meal 
1 pound Oilmeal 

1 pound Cottonseed Meal 

NO. 5 
13 pounds Timothy Hay 
8 pounds Alfalfa Hay 

2 pounds Wheat Middlings 

2 pounds Hominy Chop 

3 pounds Dried Beet Pulp 
1 pound Cottonseed Meal 

Substitute clover or alfalfa on all occasions; 
there is practically nothing in timothy hay. 

Silo 

Nothing can equal this for cheap production 
of milk. 

Faemee^s Method of Raising the Calf 

Every breeder or herdsman have their own 
method, but I have had the best of results by 
the following: take your calf right from its 
mother, after one nursing to clear the system; 
feed in the pail about one pint sweet milk every 
two hours; let the calf suck your finger in the 
pail and pull it out; the calf will soon drink. 
Care should be taken not to over-feed as it will 
cause stomach disorders; better feed with care 
and avoid trouble ; put a small bunch of hay be- 
fore your calf in a rack; it will soon begin to 
nibble. After a few days when the calf drinks 
well, give half whole and half skimmed milk, 
gradually decreasing your whole milk until you 



THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 95 

are feeding skimmed milk; put a small hand- 
ful of oat meal and bran in the milk. Have a 
small clean box in your calf pen with ground 
oats, corn meal and bran with a pinch of salt, 
rub a little of this mixture over the calf ^s nose 
and the calf will soon begin to eat the grain. 

I feed skimmed milk for one year twice a 
day, always keeping in mind you want bone, 
muscle and size; do not stunt your calf for it 
will never recover. Before raising any heifer, 
regardless of its breeding, always look at the 
teats and see if they are well spread apart and 
evenly set; if they are drawn together better 
let your neighbor raise it under condition that 
you will buy it back when fresh if you desire, 
or fatten and sell to the butcher. Blooded 
stock must be killed on your place ; there are too 
many cows that milk out of their rear udders 
and practically nothing from her four teats. 

SwixE 

There is money in swine and it can be raised 
very profitably by the following method : Good, 
warm, clean breeding houses ; pens should be at 
least ten by ten, with a two by four joist ex- 
tended around all sides, or pipe method, up 
from the floor eight inches and twelve inches 
from your side walls so your brood sows can- 
not lay against the wall. Have good clean 
shavings or clipped straw and you will lose no 



96 THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 



o 




THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 97 

pigs by being laid or trampled upon ; keep your 
60WS gentle so you can handle them; by all 
means do not disturb your sows when farrow- 
ing, it has caused more young sows to eat their 
pigs than any one thing; once the habit you 
better kill the sow; better darken your pen. 
For maintaining twelve good brood sows you 
may take any one ten acre rough field, alter- 
nating it in four fields, two and one-half acres 
to the field, allowing a runway up the center, so 
sows can come to their feeding quarters. Have 
this well fenced by a good strong swine fence 
made for that purpose, leaving a gate opening 
in each field, this allowing you to pasture any 
field that is ready. 

In field No. 1, plant rye in the fall; start to 
pasture about May 10th; lot No. 2, oats and 
peas ; lot No. 3, soy beans ; lot No. 4, rape and 
clover; pasture this, alternating fields as they 
are eaten off; re-plowing lot one to Hungarian 
millet; what you don't use, mow and put in 
your barn for winter feed. The little pigs 
should be fed in an off-set away from their 
mothers; the idea is to force the young stock 
to w^eigh one hundred pounds dressed in the 
quickest possible time, which should be no 
longer than three and a half months; kill and 
market same or sell on hoof regardless of 
market price, but keep your sows continually 
bred; ring your sows so they will not root. 
Give them one feed of grain a day. For winter, 



98 THE KEYSTONE OP INDUSTRIES 

feed &Ye acres of corn, five acres of v^e; 
ground rye and cob meal; no better feed, and 
cheapest in existence that I have ever raised; 
get one field in alfalfa as soon as you can. 

To force young pigs use ground oats one- 
half, one-quarter corn meal, one-quarter mid- 
dlings ; you will have bone, frame and size ; this 
has got them there for me and should for any 
one who tries the method; keep them fed so 
after eating that they lie down and sleep. In 
selecting young pigs for breeding purposes, 
carefully examine their breasts and count their 
teats; do not breed a sow with four teats; the 
more the better and you will gradually establish 
a line of long breasted sows; have nice long 
bodies, oval rumps, short legs as possible, broad 
shoulders, short nosed and pricked ears, and 
you will have some breeder. Keep your pen, 
when shut up, free from dampness as many 
brood sows get rheumatism. 

FOKAGE CkOPS for SwINE 

Dwarf Essex Rape. — In sections where al- 
falfa winter kills, and, providing it is desired to 
seed a crop that can be utilized the first year, 
there is nothing that compares with Dwarf 
Essex rape. It can be seeded any time from 
the first of March to the first of August, and 
providing reasonable judgment, is used in pas- 
turing the crop, it will supply green forage well 



THE KEYSTONE OP INDUSTRIES 99 

into October. Prom six to eight pounds of seed 
per acre is all that is required and the cost is 
but 6 cents per pound. It is by all odds the 
cheapest crop to seed and is adapted to prac- 
tically all conditions. The animals should not 
be turned in, however, until the plants are 10 
or 11 inches high, and at no time should they 
be permitted to crop the plants down short, un- 
less it is late in October when it is desired to 
clean up the field. 

Dwarf Essex rape and soy beans with sweet 
clover make one of the best combinations, and 
the following mixture per acre, can be used to 
advantage: Soy beans, 1 bushel; Dwarf Es- 
sex rape, 6 pounds; sweet clover, ten pounds. 
The rape and sweet clover are mixed together, 
and distributed by means of a press drill, while 
the soy beans are put on by means of an ordin- 
ary grain drill run in the opposite direction 
from which the rape and soy beans were drilled. 
This insures an even distribution of the seed, 
hence a good stand. 

Red Clover. — An abundance of lime prac- 
tically insures a satisfactory crop of red clover. 
Fall seedings do the best and the red clover can 
be safely pastured the first year. Oftentimes 
it will not last more than two years, but as a 
source of protein it compares quite favorably 
with alfalfa and there is nothing more palatable 
than the juicy leaves of this legume. It cer- 
tainly should have a place in the rotation on 



100 THE KEYSTONE OP INDUSTRIES 

every pig farm. Pigs in clover soon make Hogs 
for the butcher, providing ear corn supplements 
such forage. 

Soy Beans. — In the southern states the soy 
bean is rapidly gaining a foothold in their crop 
rotations and it is gradually pushing its way 
northward. It is an expensive and troublesome 
crop to harvest for seed, but this difficulty van- 
ishes where pigs are utilized as bean harvesters. 
In combination with rape it makes a most ex- 
cellent forage crop, and with favorable sea- 
son conditions it is doubtful if any combination 
that might be suggested would excel in useful- 
ness, these companion crops. The pigs will 
naturally eat the soy beans first, but careful 
observation goes to show that the porkers al- 
ways top out their meals with a few rape leaves. 
The sweet clover may be omitted and the mix- 
ture recommended is as follows : Soy beans 
(Ito San Variety), 1 bushel; Dwarf Essex rape, 
eight pounds. The animals may be turned in 
when the rape plants are ten to eleven inches 
high, or if it is desired to fatten the animals it 
would be well to delay foraging until the beans 
are all in pod. If ear corn is used as a supple- 
ment for fattening animals, foraging in a field 
where this mixture is utilized, the gains will 
not only be rapid, but economical, and the 
profits will astonish the conservative farmer. 

Oats and Canada Field Peas. — Oats and Can- 
ada field peas may be seeded early in the spring, 



THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 101 

and can be pastured safely about thirty-five 
days after planting, providing season condi- 
tions are favorable. It would be well, bow- 
ever, to add six pounds of rape per acre to a 
mixture of a bushel of oats and a bushel of 
Canada field peas per acre, for the oats and 
peas are gone, the rape plants would take re- 
off for a week or ten days the rape would fur- 
nish green forage throughout the balance of 
the season. What is termed a ^ ' shot gun" com- 
bination is as follows : Oats, thirty pounds ; 
Canada field peas, fifty pounds; Dwarf Essex 
rape, ^Ye pounds; sweet clover, eight pounds; 
red clover, five pounds. There is nothing that 
is more useful for brood sows in the early 
spring than the practice of permitting them 
to forage at leisure in green rye or wheat 
fields. This winter grain can be seeded in the 
fall after the forage crops have been killed by 
frost and in case barn yard manure is spread 
on the green rye or wheat during the winter 
months, it will take root early in the spring 
and supply an abundance of green forage. 
There is some question about the actual amount 
of nutriment the pigs are able to find in green 
rye or wheat, but there is no question about its 
usefulness as a s-ucculent feed. It can be 
plowed under as a green manure crop if it grows 
past the foraging capacity of the pigs, and any 
one of the forage crops above mentioned may 
be seeded to advantage. 



102 THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 
To Keep Hogs Healthy 

No one sliould attempt to raise hogs unless 
he is willing to give them good feed, good care, 
and protect them in every way possible from 
disease. "Worms, hog cholera, lice and canker 
sore mouth kill large numbers of hogs, espe- 
cially little pigs. To prevent worms keep the 
following charcoal mixture before the pigs all 
the time : 

Charcoal 1 bushel 

Hardwood ashes 1 bushel 

Salt 8 pounds 

Air-slaked lime 8 pounds 

Sulphur 4 pounds 

Pulverized Copperas 2 pounds 

First mix the lime, salt and sulphur thor- 
oughly, and then mix in the charcoal and ashes. 
Dissolve the copperas in two quarts of hot 
water and sprinkle it over the whole mass, mix- 
ing thoroughly. Store this in a barrel under 
shelter, and keep some of it in an open shallow 
box where the hogs can get it as they wish. 

Have a rubbing post with bags saturated with 
a solution of good disinfectant. The man who 
fails with hogs is the one who says — anything 
is good enough for the hogs, but the successful 
man will say — nothing is too good for the hogs. 



THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 103 
CHAPTER X 

Poultry 

A LITTLE game all by itself ; some succeed but 
others fail, but it is conceded to be a sick man's 
game. This is a big mistake, for every dollar 
you get out of the hen you have to earn ; this is 
why there are a great many failures. There 
are business men Avho have sons that they do 
not know what to do with, so they buy them a 
chicken farm. They go to a poultry supply 
house and some good salesman sells them every- 




Blue Ribbon Winners Taken From Life. Owned, Bred, Conditioned and Shown by the 
Writer. These Kind Can Win Anv^vhere. 



104 THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 

thing in the catalogne ; they have visions of sup- 
plying hotels, restaurants and private trade at 
fancy prices; they put up houses, some good, 
others on theory; buy hens or pullets, crowd 
them in the houses, throw them grain morning 
and night and expect them to bring results, 
never realizing the care poultry has got to have 
to make it pay. Some have visions of blue rib- 
bons ; pay big prices for strings of show birds ; 
come to the shows and win, but the breeder who 
sold them has no fear, as he knows the pur- 
chaser cannot breed or condition them, and you 
never hear of them again, for they do not come 
back, but take large space in poultry magazines, 
state their winnings and finally disappear en- 
tirely off the map. The boy was no good be- 
fore his father bought him the chicken farm 
and is no good after, for he didn't mean to work 
anyway. If you are not looking for work keep 
out of the poultry business; it is night and day. 
There are two kinds of pomltry business: one 
for the show room and the other commercial. 
Do not think for an instant that a man who can 
condition and breed show birds would be a suc- 
cess commercially, for the show game is a mil- 
lionaire's hobby and the owner must expect to 
pay for that hobby and the man who can put 
birds across and win. The only men who make 
big money at the show game are the old breed- 
ers, and it has taken them years to do it. The 
commercial man is a man who can get the most 



THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 105 

dollars and cents out of liis poultry; a good 
producer of eggs, good feeder and grower of 
broilers, roasters and capons; this man lias 
hard, thoughtful work; he may he seen going 
around scratching his head, and his employer 
immediately concedes he doesn't work. This 
man is thinking, his brains are w^orking, con- 
jtriving a way to get everything out of his 
poultry Avith the least expense; now this man 
may be a good producer, but can he sell his 
goods! Generally he cannot, for the best 
poultrymen are poor salesmen; you cannot ex- 
pect any man to produce and sell at the same 
time. He cannot leave his poultry, for if he 
does they immediately go bad on him, so don't 
expect a poultryman to be a show-man, com- 
mercial man and a salesman combined. If 
your poultry man raises the product, you 
will have no trouble finding a salesman to 
sell the product. Don't worry about selling 
until you have something to sell. There are 
a very few commercial poultry farms that 
are really making money on egg production, but 
there are plants doing custom hatching which 
do a fair business, but seldom show a bona fide 
profit, as the advertising for the sale of these 
chicks takes most of the profit. But a man as 
an individual who goes into the enterprise him- 
self and works himself, using all labor saving 
devices, can generally make it pay, but must 
give it his utmost care. Companies and private 



106 THE KEYSTONE OP INDUSTRIES 

individuals who are obliged to have their work 
done, seldom make it pay. The causes of these 
failures is that one man cannot take care of and 
keep properly the number of chickens to over- 
come his salary and current expenses, so the 
owner can make an interest on his investment. 
Poultry can never pay big salaries, as the larg- 
est percentage of the eggs come from the farm- 
ers, as a side line ; where milk, swine and poul- 
try are raised, a man cannot fail if managed 
properly; this combination farming cannot be 
beat ; you cannot get the same results from one 
thousand hens as you can from a hundred; 
figuring on this basis will not Avork out. The 
writer would never encourage any one to go 
in the poultry business as a business, regard- 
less of flattering reports, as they are not sub- 
stantial; there are only odd places here and 
there that are really making a success of the 
same. It is conceded that fruit trees are good 
in a poultry yard, but from personal observa- 
tion it is no place for fruit trees, as the ground 
becomes hard, lacks moisture and fruit dries 
right on the trees; for good fruit trees must 
have cultivation. 

Fktjit and Okchakds 

This style of farming sometimes is the most 
disastrous, as no one can figure on a perishable 
crop ; if you have cold storage you can possibly 



THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 107 

make a success, but that success depends en- 
tirely on your market conditions. When fruit 
is abundant you cannot give it away; when 
scarce you should be able to store same with the 
best results ; fruit with mixed farming will pay, 
but for a man with small capital to risk fruit 
alone is taking big chances ; one storm and late 
frost have ruined many a promising crop. 
After one storm you will find your ground cov- 
ered with your fruit and the profit on your crop 
faded away and the expense of spraying and 
care has all been for nothing. Without money 
keep out of fruit farming. 



108 THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 
CHAPTER XI 

Intensive Farming on a Small Acreage 

A good many people can make themselves a 
nice yearly income from two acres of ground, 
if intensive gardening is practiced, but this de- 
pends upon the location of the plot; this land 
should be spaced in plots and nothing but small 
garden truck grown, fourteen inches apart — 
such as the following: Lettuce, carrots, beets, 
leeks, onions and Swiss chard, and all small 
varieties of vegetables. You must have irri- 
gation over the entire plots to make this pay, 
either by overhead or by hose leading from a 
direct outlet ; in the fall, after clearing all crops 
from the land it should be put in cold frames, 
growing the same product as in the summer; 
must be near a small village where you can get 
all the manure required for the carting, but you 
will have to keep one horse working winter and 
summer doing this carting. Also a strawberry 
plot and about sixty head of chickens for lay- 
ing purposes ; you will soon create a demand for 
your product and customers will come to your 
place for everything you can produce. All 
running vines, such as tomatoes and cucumbers, 
should be trellised, running north and south; 
sweet corn, tomatoes, egg plants and peppers 
should be started in paper pots, in your hot 
beds, which could be made of card-board and 



THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 109 




m 






\^*:^S^::^ 










A Sullivan Garden on Two Acres of Ground. This Man Needs no Reference. 
Would You Employ Him Without One? No! 



110 THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 

transplanted as soon as the weather is settled 
to insure an early crop. Every available space 
must be used. Possibly one ton of commercial 
fertilizer will be required ; the method of using 
this fertilizer, broadcasting on top of the 
ground after planting, allowing the rains, dews 
and natural gravity to carry it to the roots; 
while the manure alone will give you results, 
the object is to get your crops quick and an- 
other one on the ground. There is an opening 
for a garden spot of this kind in almost every 
village, and it will be a credit to the village as 
well as a profitable business for any man to go 
into it, but it means work. There are many 
men who could have just such places, but are 
working in factories and clerkships, never re- 
alizing the value to be obtained from a two acre 
home, thus decreasing the high cost of living 
by selling direct to the consumer. There are 
small garden farms located near cities and large 
villages that run their produce into the near- 
by market ; the Italians and Germans are the 
leaders in this particular line of truck, and are 
using the ash dumps in adjacent cities and get- 
ting good results. Why not you? 

What Constitutes a Gakdenee 

A gardener is a man who loves his garden, 
and any weeds that grow hurt him; the best 
gardener will fail if he is expected to fix locks, 



THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 111 




112 THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 

mend baby carriages, beat rugs, wash windows 
and is taken away from Ms work; many men 
can be useful but you must not condemn tliem 
if their garden is a failure, if by their good na- 
ture and usefulness they are kept out of their 
garden. Let your gardener make his own selec- 
tion of seed; leave the gaMen entirely up to 
him — he will have seeds that rotate them- 
selves, giving you a supply of vegetables 
throughout the season. Naturally you walk in 
your garden and you see weeds and you call 
your gardener and say, ' ^ John, there are weeds 
in the garden; you cannot be a very good gar- 
dener." The gardener will tell you: '^Why, 
Mrs. or Mr., I beat the rugs, run to the store, 
etc. I do not get time to do anything. ' ' He gets 
angry and talks back, but will then stop and 
think and consider his family, and works night 
and day to catch up. The next week you call 
some expert to trim the vines and trees as you 
have lost a little faith in your gardener on ac- 
count of the weeds; the expert starts to trim 
the vines, whether the season is late or not be- 
cause he does not wish to lose the job. You 
order your gardener to help him. He says, 
< < Why should I help him ; I am your gardener ! ^ ' 
as he knows the man is butchering the vines and 
every clip hurts him. Some of the vines die 
and, you call him and ask him why they are 
dying, and he starts to tell you it was too late 
to prune and gets angrier by the minute be- 



THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 113 

cause you doubt him and finally will say: ''To 
hell with your job/' What you have done— 
you have broken the heart of a good gardener 
who knew his business ; the question is now do 
you give him a reference! No; you state that 
he has a high temper, impertinent, cannot work 
with other men and this man is kept out of 
work because his employer knocks him; gets 
shabby and finally puts his family in a fur- 
nished room and hires out single to some broad- 
minded farmer and sends so much money each 
week to his family; after a year's work gets 
a fine reference from this farmer and starts to 
build up his lost gardener's reputation. Now, 
Master or Mistress, have you done justice or 
injustice to your gardener? There are some 
gardeners, good on flowers, vegetables and 
greenhouses ; the combination is good but they 
are generally better on one particular line, i.e., 
excellent in greenhouse, flowers and propaga- 
tion; fair on outside perennials and .annuals 
and poor on vegetables ; a man good on all the 
combination is invaluable and worth any price ; 
it's a gift of Nature. 



114 THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 






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THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 115 
Maekets 

A great many comments and illusions have 
been made over the hamper system of selling 
produce from the irrigated and intensive garden 
farms. This system is very seldom a success ; 
on odd occasions you may find a man with a 
few customers, mostly friends. Look at it log- 
ically — the people who can afford to buy ham- 
pers are generally away in the country in the 
summer or dine out in the winter ; the moneyed 
class have their own gardener who -sends the 
goods from their own place. This class who 
stay in town and have chefs and cooks let 
them select their own vegetables, as a good 
cook does not like to have things handed to him, 
never knowing where he stands or what kind of 
vegetables he is going to have ; then, again, the 
gardener has trouble to get a regulation of 
vegetables and generally fills up the hamper 
with the most plentiful things, possibly some- 
thing the customers care less for. The poorer 
class buy from hand to mouth. When you look 
it square in the face, you see the problem will 
not work out. The market gardener has to lift 
the produce quick and it requires a great many 
distributors. That's one reason a public mar- 
ket never succeeds ; the farmer cannot take the 
time and stand in the market to hand out his 
load to the public, as he would have his load all 
picked over and one-half destroyed by being 



116 THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 

• 
handled; lie has no way of delivering a basket 

of potatoes if he sold them. This knocks the 

direct to the consumer idea flat, but the stands 

could be let to the farmers, they disposing of 

their own goods. There are farmers w^ho have 

tried to rent stands in the public market and 

couldn 't do so ; it seems there is a certain clique 

that get these stands ; the market is supposed to 

be open for the public to buy direct from the 

farmer. The farmer is solicited to patronize 

the market, but when he tries to rent a stand 

he is shut out ; he can stand there with a wagon 

and have his load picked to pieces and one-half 

ruined for him to take home; it never will be 

done by the real farmer. 



THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 117 

CHAPTER XII 

What Constitutes a Wokking Manager 

A working manager is a man wlio works on 
your farm leading his men, the same as is done 
with the general farmer. Men of this type can 
do this on small farms, but on large farms 
where a great many men are required they have 
all they can do to handle the men properly. 
Do not expect your working manager to be your 
bookkeeper, for if this kind of a man works 
with his men, it is next to impossible for him 
to keep books, except to put down the current 
expenses, etc. Do not expect him to sit up 
nights keeping books after his day^s work, as 
it would soon finish him. If you expect your 
manager to work, keep the books yourself. 

What Constitutes a Herdsman 

A herdsman is a man who understands all 
feeding of the cow for advanced registry test 
work, balancing the ration to the individual, 
getting the most out of food consumed, both in 
fat and milk, and a good milker. No herds- 
man will let anyone but himself milk a cow that 
is on test work. He also must understand the 
Babcock test. 



118 THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 

What Constitutes a Daikyman • 

A dairyman consists of a good butter and 
cheese maker; on small places some milk and 
care for all stock ; on large places they do noth- 
ing but the butter and cheese work. He must 
be a good, clean man, not only in personal ap- 
pearance but in habits, as nothing will spoil 
butter quicker than carelessness and dirt. He 
should be able to feed, balance rations and un- 
derstand the Babcock test work. 

What Constitutes a Milkek 

Must be a good, dry hand milker, able to 
handle about eight cows an hour; understand 
the grooming and washing of cows and keep- 
ing the stable in a sanitary condition — a thor- 
ough cow man. He must be a quiet, clean 
fellow, who does not abuse the cows; no cigar- 
ettes. 

What Constitutes a Faemee 

A man who can do anything on a farm, gen- 
erally called a farm-hand; he must be able to 
milk, plow, know how to do all farm work. 
Now this man is no farm-hand — a man that can 
do these required things is a farmer, generally 
called a farm-hand to cheapen his ability. This 
class of combination man is invaluable on any 



THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 119 

farm and sliould be the highest paid man, but 
is generally offered the lowest possible figure 
for his work. It is an unjustifiable mistake — 
he is worth more than any teamster, milker, 
poultry-man or gardener, as you cannot place 
him wrong. Why call him a farm-hand? A 
farm-hand is nothing more than a laborer or a 
harvest-hand, called in our state laws an agri- 
cultural hand. 

What Constitutes a Faem Teamstek 

A farm teamster is a man who cares for his 
team and handles all farm machinery without 
instruction. Is good on estates, under super- 
intendents, who are not up in farm machinery 
work, but to the farmer is valueless. Farm 
teamsters never make farmers or get beyond 
their calling, as they detest cattle, and on all 
good farms you will find cattle. 

Conclusion 

It is the tendency of the government maga- 
zines and socities to improve the agricultural 
conditions of farmers. These societies consist 
of the most prominent millionaires in the coun- 
try — the point of view is to show the farmer 
how to produce more crops or a system of 
loaning money. You never hear of a million- 
aire farmer failing, as he can always retire 



120 THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 




The Farmer, the Most Abused Man in the World. Everyone 

Trying to Show Him How to Run His Business. The 

Chief Factor of the Keystone of Industries. 



honorably. He starts his place with great am- 
bition to have a commercial enterprise and pos- 
sibly eends his son to take an agricultural 
course for future protection. He equips his 
place with every desirable thing and is going to 



THE KEYSTONE OP INDUSTRIES 121 



'^show'^ the world. After a year or two lie 
finds Ills enterprise is costing him a small for- 
tune to maintain. He starts to think of a way 
out of it, for he cannot sell and come out whole. 
Now the easiest way is to donate it to his state 
for a college experimental station or farm 
school for the taxpayers to maintain, and is for- 
ever heralded as a man who has done wonderful 
things for agriculture, and possibly gets a gov- 
ernment appointment in the Department of Ag- 
riculture or on some commission; but the poor 
devil who starts farming on small capital, puts 
his very life into his w^ork, pays for his ex- 
perience, and through unseen obstacles his 
money fails him on the eve of success, this man 
is heralded as a failure ; but his experience qual- 
ifies him to be the most successful superin- 
tendent or farmer for some estate owner. The 
poor man's loss is the rich man's gain. If this 
man should get his second start he will suc- 
ceed. 

The government has passed a law for farm- 
ers' loan banks, for the solvent farmer. Now 
I say that the farmer who has to go to any or- 
ganization or government for money to run his 
farm had better sell his farm at once. A sol- 
vent farmer in any locality can get all the 
money he needs right at home. The govern- 
ment or an organization will not loan to a man 
who is not solvent. What the farmer can get : 
Fertilizer, machinery, manure and seed on time, 



122 THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 

but is charged 5 per cent, for time price. Hef 
can win tliis 5 per cent, if paid within the time 
limit. I have known companies to extend 
credit to farmers for two years when they have 
had bad seasons. These men have paid their 
bills and flourished and did not o\vn their 
farms. The solvent man can borrow money 
on notes if necessary and extend credit on 
these notes when due and is not obliged to 
mortgage his place. You read about co-opera- 
tion to sell; there never can or will be co- 
operation in farming, unless it's a United States 
co-operation of all farms, as there is generally 
an over-production of farm products in the 
United States. What I mean by over-produc- 
tion is that different states cannot use their own 
production and are obliged to ship interstate. 
For instance, some of the New York City milk 
comes from Vermont, New Hampshire and all 
outside States; how can the New York State 
milk producers co-operate? You cannot co- 
operate on anything that is not staple, and farm 
produce is not staple; it cannot be manufac- 
tured. Farming is nothing but a gamble and 
you cannot figure on a gamble. It depends en- 
tirely on nature seasons. If the season is a 
poor one the farmer has no trouble to get good 
prices, if he gets a crop ; if medium he gets fair 
returns; if a good growing season there is an 
over-production and he loses. If you cannot 
control production you cannot co-operate, and 



THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 123 

you can never tell which product there is going 
to be a scarcity of. Most of these societies are 
composed of the most of the prominent men 
of the country who are not producing farmers. 
The producing farmer is not represented even 
in our state affairs; the men being appointed 
are either men representing publishing houses 
or men with technical farm education. Why 
not have the leading farmers of each county 
select their own farmer representative in all 
these hearings 1 The man who is actually farm- 
ing for his maintenance, this is the man that 
can tell you real farming. 

Now there are three kinds of farmers in most 
every section you enter — First, the producing 
successful farmer; he is up to the minute — 
seems to get his crops when others fail and 
makes money at every turn of his hand; is al- 
ways on the job; owns his auto and is termed 
the independent farmer. Second, is the farmer 
who just makes a comfortable living; keeps his 
children looking good; gives them a fair edu- 
cation and is considered a good substantial man 
in his neighborhood, but doesn^t get rich; 
through some unseen thing, it may be a little, 
carelessness, laziness or lack of good judgment, 
or not getting up in the morning; termed the 
existing farmer. Third, is the experimenter, 
the farmer or business man book farmer who 
is always running to a book, experimenting and 
jumping from one thing to another on some 



124 THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTBIES 

experiment he lias read about or heard of whi5h 
has been a success and adapted and made 
money on the farm it was experimented on. 
This man hasn 't one settled idea ; keeps chang- 
ing his crops every year or settles on one crop ; 
puts all his eggs in one basket and fails for he 

doesn't follow a rotation and says: ^'H , 

there is no money in farming. ' ' No living man 
can please or work for this man; it's just this 
fellow who has thrown a forecast over the coun- 
try, creating the impression that farmers lack 
brains. It's an unjustified mistake and unfair 
to the producing farmers, who are the very 
Keystone of Industries and Backbone of the 
Nation. 

They laugh about the farmer 

And picture him with whiskers, too, 

But the man of the land is one grand man, 

For his hand is feeding you. 

Agriculture 

To the readers of this book the writer will 
endeavor to explain to them the importance and 
the nobleness of the farmers of the world. This 
world is supposed to be started with a garden; 
this may be true and it may be a fable, but we 
will say it is true ; we certainly know this world 
was inhabited by white men ; these men had in- 
tellect; they caught wild beasts and birds of 
different species and domesticated them; they 
found grain and natural vegetation in a wild 



THE KEYSTONE OF INDUSTRIES 125 

state; by collecting these things together and 
breeding and planting and cultivating them they 
formed tribes, for they found the ground would 
yield an abundance if these were cultivated and 
cared for, thus showing them the way to sus- 
tain their bodies and develop their brains, and 
then forming into tribes, known as the wise men 
of their day. The men of ^ the present are the 
leaders in industries created through agricul- 
ture, hence the development of the world. 

These are proven facts — when this country 
was discovered it was inhabited by red men; 
they lived on their ability to hunt and kill game, 
given them by natural instinct ; they had no in- 
dustries, no money and were obliged to seek 
new hunting grounds as soon as game got 
scarce or fight his neighboring tribe for the pos- 
session of theirs or .starve. The white man 
landed and started farming and showed these 
people they could colonize in one spot and live, 
hence the trade with the red men for whiskey 
and food stuffs and created an industry in the 
trade of furs. This went on and as farms were 
started throughout the country the railroads 
started, first with caravans and then the men of 
scientific thought and genius developed the rail- 
roads; to this generation wherever farming 
starts industries follow; hence the interest the 
railroads take in the development of agriculture 
which made the world, stopped barbarism, civil- 
ized people and developed Christianity. 



FARM ESTATE HELP 

CONSTANTLY ON HAND 

Superintendents the best; Working Managers that know; 
Horse and Kennel men, Show King; Herdsmen's Feeders for 
Test Work; Dairymen, best butter-makers; Milkers, Dry 
Hand; Gardeners, Vegetables, Greenhouse, Roses, Carnations, 
Violets, Mums, Orchids, Gardenias and Tropical Fruit; Poul- 
trymen up-to-the-minute; Farm Couples, Farm Hands. My 
organized crews will clean up any place that gets behind, 
under personal management. 

For Good Horses, Cows, Swine, Sheep, Poultry, Baby Chicks, 
Eggs for Hatching, Fertilizer, Seeds that Grow, Manure, 
Farm Equipment. 

Systematizing Farms; Judges, Mates and Conditions Ex- 
hibition Poultry; Breaks Trains, Colts and Sheep Dogs; I 
Sell, Set Spray Fruit Trees, Shrubbery; Renovate Lawn and 
Golf Links. 

No charge for Help until they prove their value to Employer. 




SIDNEY YOUNG SULLIVAN 

FARMER SINCE 1898 CREDENTIALS SUBMITTED 

The most popular Practical, Farm, Garden, Cattle, Swine, 
Poultry and Labor Expert to-day. 

The only Agency of it's kind in the world. I have no com- 
petition. Men that pass the qualifications in their respective 
lines through me need no other credentials. They have made 
a reputation for me and their employers. 

OLD RELIABLE FARMERS SECURITY BUREAU 
Phone Cortlandt 6486 115 NASSAU STREET, NEW YORK 



